


Blazing Sun

by HyperLittleNori (Shiguresan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Dry Humping, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Magical Wounds, Morally Ambiguous Peter, Overstimulation, Post-Nogitsune, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Post-Season/Series 03 Fix-It, oversensitivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:45:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresan/pseuds/HyperLittleNori
Summary: If he closed his eyes he knew he’d see them again, see their clawed fingers reaching for him through the door that had never closed. Through the void. The darkness was connected to him still through a wound that wasn’t healing, that should never have been there in the first place.Stiles and the Nogitsune were connected too strongly when Kira stabbed him with her sword. Now Stiles is left with a magical wound that only grows bigger as time passes...





	Blazing Sun

**Author's Note:**

> One of my pieces for the Steter Reverse Bang 2019 in collaboration with [Firebull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firebull/profile)/[Originfire](https://originfire.tumblr.com). Hope it does the art justice :)
> 
> Notes to bear in mind: Malia isn’t Peter’s daughter and never slept with Stiles. She won’t be in this story (sorry Malia fans, I don’t have anything against her, she just didn’t fit here). Parrish is present more than maybe he was in canon at the time, but I like to think he had the Sheriff’s back, even before the hellhound stuff cropped up ;) Also the timeline of Teen Wolf canon is sketchy at best but Stiles is 18 here and Peter is...whatever Peter is.

 The Nogitsune was gone. In his darkest moments, when he still doubted it, Stiles would screw his eyes shut and force himself to picture its face, _his_ face, as Scott’s claws and fangs had rented its flesh, as the katana had pierced its chest. The shock of it had sent a tingling ache through his body, a cold sensation like a sudden sharp blast of icy air when a door was blown open.

 

 Only since then he had started to realise that door had never been closed, not even when the familiar face the Nogitsune had worn had turned to dust at their feet.

 

 Now, even with it gone, he wasn’t void but he wasn’t Stiles, either.

 

 He walked the long, echoing dark cavern of that basement, the blackness all-consuming and the cold biting at him like long, gnarled fingers. He shuddered. His breath came out in furls of mist in front of him that he couldn’t see. But he could see _them_.

  
 Unlike its counterpart in real life, the basement stretched on for miles with no end in sight. The grating above, with its sea of tiny circles of light, was so far above him, a glimpse of hope so far away. The structural pillars, there hadn’t been that many before, had there?

 

 His heart caught somewhere in his throat, tight and aching. Fear prickled along his fingers until they were numb, until all of him was _throbbing_ in physical pain from the tension. Because shadows lurked behind every single one of those pillars.

 

  _They_ stood out somehow even in the dark, the light from so far above _just_ catching their unnatural profiles, their twisted bodies and shining, unnatural eyes.

 

 Stiles couldn’t run. He kept walking. If he could just reach the end, if he could just get by them unnoticed…

 

 But they were creeping closer. Closer and closer, sending Stiles’s heart rate soaring in a crescendo of screaming noise and panic until his head was pounding.

 

 Suddenly, claws sank into his neck and the scream that tore from his throat was silent and rasping, yet as deafening as the blood pounding in his ears.

 

 

 He woke up already screaming, clawing at his neck to tear away the embedded claws that weren’t really there. He’d already scratched the skin raw by the time his dad flew into his room, tugging his hands away from his neck to pin them between their chests as he wrapped him in a tight hug. Even as he came back to himself, Stiles winced, bit down on his lip to stifle the cry of discomfort that threatened to spill. His chest, his back, they were both killing him and that pain, rather that assuring him his dreams were just that, only confirmed their reality.

 

 “It’s okay,” his dad breathed softly into his hair, stroking his fingers through it reassuringly as he rocked him like he was a child. “You’re okay, kiddo, it’s over. You’re safe.”

 _No_ , Stiles thought with despair, staring hard at the fabric of his dad’s t-shirt because if he closed his eyes he knew he’d see them again, see their clawed fingers reaching for him through the door that had never closed.

 

 Through the void.

 

 The darkness was connected to him still through a wound that wasn’t healing, that should never have been there in the first place.

 

*

*

 

 It had been weeks since the Nogitsune had fallen, since Aiden and Allison had died and Chris and Isaac had left. They were all dealing with things in their own way. Scott was understandably quiet, Lydia more fiery than ever and lost in her school work, Kira supportive but distant, all of them coping in their own ways.

 

 Stiles coped by pretending everything was fine, because the best way to help everyone else, the only thing he could do that was _useful_ was to ensure they didn’t have to him to worry about as well. So he worried by himself more often than not.

 

 He’d begged off lacrosse practice and if he was a little disappointed that his friends hadn’t tried to coerce him to go, he’d tried not to let it show. They had enough on their plates. So Stiles holed up in the school library in hopes the different setting would enable him concentrate more on his school work. His work that, after everything that had happened, he had to catch up on if he hoped to pass his classes this year. Between ADHD, sparse sleep and stress, his attention-span was at an all-time low.

 

 In the end the janitor kicked him out and Stiles found himself wincing as he levered himself out of the chair, closing his laptop up from the research he’d been doing on supernatural wounds. A search that had both distracted him from his actual school work and lead him nowhere.

 

 His head ached from exhaustion, eyes sore, mind reeling, rising up and frantically grasping at every little thing he had left to do at home as he walked out to the _Jeep_. There was the laundry left in the machine, the dry laundry stacked in piles on the side, only half put away, the dishes half done and of course his abandoned homework.

 

 So busy repaying all the favours he’d called in taking time off while Stiles was ‘ill’ and working overtime with all the strange occurrences recently, his dad hadn’t noticed the housework slipping. He hadn’t noticed that the little jobs Stiles usually did around the house were finished erratically, if at all. That was both good and bad, bad that he was overworked trying to keep his job, good that Stiles didn’t have to side-step his scrutiny or concerns.

 

 How did he even begin to answer them when he didn’t know himself?

 

 Stiles’s mind was reeling with it all, so engaged elsewhere that he forgot his usually excellent awareness of the world around him.

 

 He reached to unlock the _Jeep_ , but as he did so, the constant ache in his back and chest spiked, like a sharp stabbing twist and he froze with the shock of it. His synapses fired white-hot, so hot he felt cold sweats overwhelm him. At that moment something slammed into his side, sending him sprawling across the ground.

 

 A grunt of pain caught in his throat as his breath was knocked out of him, bright, hot pain bursting through his back to his chest and making him dizzy with nausea. His survival instincts spurred him on regardless. When the dark shape descended on him he scrabbled at the loose stones in the sparse planter he was parked by and threw it in his assailant’s face without even looking. A snarl of outrage ripped through the air. Stiles glanced around wildly, scrambling backward on the ground toward the _Jeep_.

 

 He was knocked forward, colliding with the door with a painful thump but managing to catch himself at the last second. He hauled the door open by throwing all his weight backward and at the last second, his assailant crashed into it from the other side. It stumbled back more from surprise than pain but it still gave Stiles the chance to see it fully for the first time.

 

 It looked like a man, only wrong. Its limbs were large and angular and it was hunched over, for all its immense height, its face contorted into a muzzle similar to that of an alpha wolf. Its eyes glowed a burning red in the dark.

 

 Stiles staggered back, watching as it gathered itself, seemed to taste the air through its nostrils. It was so similar to a werewolf, only longer, with its hands twisted like grotesque paws. It threw him. He hesitated, just for a second, and the beast’s eyes focussed on him, its muzzle drawing back in a low snarl, fangs too large for its mouth, glinting in the street lights as it lunged.

 

 Stiles dove down the side of the _Jeep_ , leaping into the passenger door. His car was his best chance, he’d never be able to outrun it. He got in, but as he moved to pull the door shut the creature wrapped twisted, inhuman hands around him and dragged him from the car, casting him across the unforgiving ground.

 

 Stiles twisted, enough to try and get his feet up under him but then beast was on him, slathering jaws open and descending. For that brief moment all Stiles could hear was the Nogitsune’s sharp, angry voice ringing in his ears.

_“You can’t kill me!”_

 

 He’d been strong and Stiles wasn’t and he was about to die.

 

 Suddenly, a roar tore through the night.

 

 The creature above Stiles hesitated. Its monstrous head, that wasn’t quite werewolf, lifted just in time to greet the claws that ripped across its face. It stumbled back, a raspy, animalistic cry leaving its jaws as blood sprayed across Stiles. Stiles scrambled backward on instinct and someone moved in front of him. The action might have even been called casual, if it hadn’t been for the claws glinting red with blood hanging down by his sides.

 

 The beast dove again, incensed, stronger, _faster_ now it was threatened and Stiles flinched as it crashed into the person who had come to his aid.

 

 Peter.

 

 Peter braced himself as the creature slammed into him. He sank his own claws into its belly, using its own momentum to carry it up and over him, to throw it to the floor behind him.

 

 Stiles flinched, abruptly aware that now _it_ was between him and Peter, but before he could even try to get to his feet, Peter was on it. He landed on top of it in a predator’s pounce, claws ripping into its neck and spraying blood across the ground. The beast let out a gargled, agonised cry and Peter sank his teeth into its nape, shaking it, growling thickly around its flesh until it went still under him. When the sounds of its last laboured, gurgling breaths died, Peter finally rose to his feet again.

 

 “Vrykolakas,” Peter said lightly, wincing at the mess of his coat and shrugging it off with a sigh, using the clean interior to wipe his hands clean of blood. “One of our Greek cousins, genetically speaking. Some myths mistakenly paint them as part vampire because of their tendency to drain the blood but they’re essentially from the same branch of evolution as werewolves. The same way a retriever is to a wolf.”

 

 Stiles stared up at him, adrenaline still rushing through his synapses, bursting at the ends of his limbs with nowhere to go, leaving him reeling from in shock. He watched as Peter looked from the Vrykolakas to his stained coat with distaste, before dropping it in defeat over the corpse, hands cleaned off as best as could be expected.

 

 “Which one is the domestic pet in that little scenario?” Stiles managed in spite of himself, that odd, disconnected pain throbbing in his back and chest like a distant warning as he began to come back to himself. He winced, shifting back to brace himself on the open door of the car. He pulled himself to his feet as Peter studied the corpse with reverence.

 

 “You must have come a long way, my friend, I don’t think there has ever been one of your kind in _California…_ ”

  
 Stiles felt his limbs get that almost shaky lightness as the adrenaline started to fade. He caught his reflection in the wing mirror, or at least the reflection of some pale, ghostly thing that looked a lot like him.

 

 A shadow flickered in the corner of the glass and Stiles whirled to find Peter right beside him, brow raised at Stiles’s alarm, a phone to his ear.

 

 “Yes, at the school,” Peter said into it. Then he lifted his head, an annoyed sort of aloofness crossing his face. “Well it must have been, to get passed a _true alpha_ ,” he said with clear sarcasm. “I’ll leave it to you, Scott, but don’t take too long. We wouldn’t want the janitor to stumble across it at the end of his shift.” With that he slid his phone into his pocket and regarded Stiles carefully.

 

 Peter Hale had that way of looking at him as if he could see every thought that was passing through his mind. Stiles shifted uncomfortably, because his mind was a dangerous place at that moment, full of things he kept from everyone else. The truth of how bad things were.

 

 He licked his dry lips, stepping back a fraction on instinct when Peter’s eyes drifted down to his mouth to follow the motion.

 

 “You know there’s a word for older men who hang around schools their kids don’t go to?” Stiles snapped defensively.

 

 “You really should know better than to take moonlit walks alone, especially with how ‘busy’ _Beacon Hills_ has been lately,” Peter said lightly, disregarding Stiles’s insult entirely.

 

 Stiles scowled. “Funny thing about everything that’s happened to me in the last few months? I’m not really scared of the dark anymore.”

 

 Peter tilted his chin slightly, “I wonder if that’s brave or foolish?” He studied Stiles for a moment longer, his eyes glinting slightly, _just_ catching the moonlight as he did so. Then he frowned. “You’re bleeding.” He stepped toward Stiles, hand reaching for him, but it fell short before Stiles could even say a word in protest, falling short as Peter seemed to see something in his expression. Then he gave an exasperated sigh. “Come on, let me drive.”

 “And I should do that because…?”

 

 “Because you’re about to drop where you stand, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks and you’re in no condition to drive.”

 

 Stiles lifted his chin in defiance. “Nobody except my dad or Scott drives the _Jeep._ ”

 

 “Scott, our _esteemed_ alpha is a little busy losing track of the supernatural trespassers in our territory and almost letting them devour his best friend,” Peter said tartly, “I’ll have to do.”

 

 The protest that Scott was doing the best he could, considering everything he had on his plate never even got the chance to rise to Stiles’s lips.

 

 “Look, Stiles, do you want to go to the hospital or your father with your injuries? To Miss Martin? To Scott, who I couldn’t help but notice, you’ve not been around so much lately?”

 

 Scott, and Lydia for that matter, who Stiles couldn’t even look in the eye? His dad who had enough to worry about or the hospital who wouldn’t understand it anyway? Exhaustion swept through him as the last of the adrenaline faded and left him shaky, hungry and tired beyond belief. He felt something in him snap at Peter’s knowing look. Gritting his teeth, setting his jaw against the pulsing ache spreading through his back the longer he stood there.

 

 It had dulled in the last few days, and though that had allowed Stiles to better his act that he was fine to everyone else, he hadn’t been able to convince himself. The wound was still there, it wasn’t healing and he couldn’t let his dad worry or anyone else. And yet Peter stood there and saw through his defences to the place he was still broken inside. The place where he knew himself that something was wrong.

 

 “It’s been there since Kira stabbed the Nogitsune,” Stiles breathed, looking hard at where his hand rested on his car, as if it were his only anchor to stop him from floating away into the darkness. “Sometimes it hurts more, sometimes less but it’s not healing, it’s getting _bigger_ and I don’t know what that means but I sure as hell know it’s not good.”

 

 Peter stared at him, brow furrowed as he processed Stiles’s words and when they seemed to register, his face set in a grim line. “We need to move.” There was none of the hesitant awkwardness he got from his friends or the worried vulnerability from his dad, there was only direction and for once, Stiles was glad of it.

 

 Treading the unknown path alone hadn’t worked so far.

 

 He hadn’t thought he’d trusted Peter. Not enough to drive his _Jeep_ , not enough to get into a car alone with him either. Circumstance had thrown them together so many times though, for them to save others and now, for Peter to save him.

 

 The night streamed passed them in a blur. The sparse flickers of headlamps and street lights that they passed glared in the dark, like flickers of hope gone too fast for him to grab hold of. And yet they teased at the edges of his reach, never truly leaving him.

 

 Allison was dead. Aiden was dead. Stiles didn’t have the Nogitsune’s memories but he knew he had blood on his hands, a two best friends who couldn’t even look at him. He didn’t recognise his own head from the inside. But Peter had recognised him, Peter had looked right at him and seen him, not the boy he’d been or the shadow the Nogitsune had cast, but whoever he was now. Stiles just had to figure out who that was.

 

 If he survived whatever plague feasted upon his flesh.

 

 They weren’t heading toward his house. At first he thought they were heading to Derek’s loft but then they turned into the nicer side of town, full of life even at this hour, busy and yet opulent. The kind of place that made his beat up car look out of place.

 

 When Peter pulled into a car park beneath a tall, sleek grey building, it occurred to Stiles that no one had been to Peter’s apartment. A werewolf could have likely tracked him there and Stiles was sure his dad could have through other means but he had never invited anyone to his home willingly. This was a display of trust on Peter’s part, a wolf showing someone the location of its den.

 

It was less austere than Stiles had anticipated, just like one of those nice, comfortable apartments from the catalogues, all grey and dark wood and tall windows. Peter guided him to the kitchen area of the open-planned living and dining space, filling a glass up of water from a fancy filtered jug from the fridge and sliding it along the island toward Stiles.

 

 “Let me see,” Peter said as Stiles wrapped his fingers around the cool glass.

 

 Stiles stiffened.

 

 “Let me see the wound.”

 

 His eyes weren’t cruel, they weren’t soft, just expectant, all the facades of sarcasm and wicked humour Peter usually exuded nowhere in sight. Just knowing.

 

 Stiles held his gaze for a heartbeat, then downed the glass of water. It was cold and perfect down his parched throat. The sharp burst of the purity of it on his tongue gave him the spark of nerve to shrug off his hoody.

 

 Tearing off his shirt had never really been on his top list of things to do. Even though he was decently toned for someone without werewolf metabolism, he’d always been a bit body shy. Still, he held Peter’s gaze defiantly as he pulled his t-shirt up over his head, rested his elbows on the bunched up material as he leaned forward a little on his bar stool across the countertop. He stared hard at Peter when he didn’t move, only surveyed Stiles carefully.

 

 “This isn’t a seduction.”

 

 Peter lifted his head a little, as if coming back to himself, but it wasn’t from any kind of desire, more deep thought. The tension rose off him in thick furls as he examined the wound on Stiles’s chest briefly, before leaning back round to check his back. Stiles felt his gaze like a probing finger, felt his chest constrict with anxiety, not because Peter was seeing something he had kept from even his dad, but because him seeing it meant it was real. Because Peter’s silence was as telling as anything.

 

 “They’re like the entry and exit wounds of a blade – only wider. Does it hurt right now?” Peter asked in a far too composed voice to be genuine.

 

 Stiles licked his dry lips. “Yeah, like…like a deep bruise, I guess. The bigger it grows, the less it hurts.”

 

 He drew in a sharp breath as Peter’s thumb brushed against his back, just beside the edge of the throbbing ache that, last he checked, was the size of a tennis ball.

 

 “My apologies,” Peter murmured, in a kind of distracted horror, but when Stiles shifted as if to put distance between them, Peter’s hand splayed across his side, drawing the pain completely away. The absence of it, the feeling brought with it a kind of relief he hadn’t felt in so long. Instead of pushing away, he curled his fingers in the fabric of his t-shirt and just breathed.

 

 He knew what Peter saw, a gaping wound that seemed to pierce him straight through – and yet didn’t. A swollen ghost of the hole the katana had carved into the Nogitsune. There was nothing natural about it. The one on his chest was a smaller reflection of the tennis ball sized lesion on his back, both a stretch of mottled yellow and red.

 

 They looked like old wounds, their edges dark red and purple, with black web-like tendrils creeping outward like the fingers from Stiles’s nightmares, stretching across his flesh further every day. If he turned, he could see the black lines reaching around his sides, his hips. It was as if the branches of darkness were slowly swallowing him up.

 

 Drawing in a shaky breath, even at the warm, shuddery comfort of Peter’s touch, Stiles managed roughly, “The nightmares don’t go. It just… _I_ just feel wrong, like when I pulled myself out of the Nogitsune I came back wrong somehow. Everyone keeps looking to me like I’m the same person as I was before but I’m just… _not_.” It all spilled out of him, all the things he hadn’t been able to tell anyone else lest he ruin his act. And when his lips stopped moving shame spread over him. He braced himself for Peter’s derisive response but none came.

 

 For some reason, the memory of Peter saying lightly _“I’ve always liked you, Stiles,”_ came unbidden to his mind.

 

 Just then, Peter drew back, circling around toward the industrial looking coffee machine. “Would coffee help?” he asked in a way that sounded like he _knew_ it calm his jitteriness, his restless anxiety.

 

 His ADD had changed somewhat, his wandering attention was easier to handle, honed by situations where his research had saved his friends time and time again. While his self-restraint and tact hadn’t changed any, his hyperactivity had settled into internal restlessness, one that manifested in the kind of jittery movements he was displaying now. But then, Peter _was_ the kind of person who would observe all that from each of their exchanges over the two years they’d known each other. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.

 

 Stiles knew in a way that was entirely _not_ self-pitying that no one really looked at him. It was always Scott, who was more charming than him in a boyish sort of way, Lydia who turned every head in the room, or his dad who everyone respected. People noticed him for all the wrong reasons and he had long since come to terms with that.

 

 But Peter had noticed him, had taken note of things about him that other people considered inconsequential.

 

 If Stiles had been a bit more himself, he might have made a comment about being both flattered and disturbed but as it was, he gave a short nod. He accepted the coffee when Peter passed it to him, foamy and sweet and it was like a balm to his frayed sensed. Seduced by it, he sipped it despite the steam rising from the rim and welcomed the scalding perfection to his tongue.

 

 God, that was good.

 

 When he had savoured the first few sips, he lifted his gaze to find Peter leaning against the island across from him, watching him with his fingers curled in front of his mouth as if he were thinking.

 

 “I never thought it was a coincidence that shortly after the Nogitsune was defeated, _Beacon Hills_ became a popular holiday destination for the supernatural,” Peter said when their eyes met. “But now I think you may be tied to all this as well.”

 

 Stiles swallowed. It took him a moment to make his mouth work but when he did, he heard the horror grating at his throat. “Because of the wound?” His fingers tightened around the mug.

 

 “I’ve heard of supernatural wounds that don’t heal but the blow was dealt to the Nogitsune, not to you and that changes everything. I’m just not sure how.” Peter lowered his hands from his face. “I’ll help you, Stiles.” There was a moment then, with the steam and sweet smell of coffee rising between them across the glossy granite worktop, when their gazes held and Stiles felt something fluctuate within him. A spark of recognition, not quite trust, or at least not only that, but understanding.

 

 Then Peter stood, breathing in sharply and breaking the spell that had fallen. “Starting with your stomach, because I can hear it eating itself from over here.” He turned and pulled open the fridge built into the glossy dark grey cabinet behind him and surveyed the contents. “How do fajitas sound to you? Put some fire in your belly?”

 

 

 

 Stiles had a vague recollection of taking a seat on the obscenely soft corner sofa with a full belly, when he blinked awake to find a blanket thrown over him, soft and warm. Slowly he sat up, blinking at the sea of lights in the darkness beyond the windows as he came back to himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drifted off so easily in his own bed, much less Peter Hale’s living room. He wondered how long he would’ve slept, if the voices hadn’t woken him.

 

 Turning his head, he could just see his dad’s back. The Sheriff stood between Peter, who was sitting at the island with papers spread across the countertop, and the living area. It was almost as if he’d instinctively placed himself between Peter and Stiles. Except Peter had covered Stiles with the softest blanket ever and for some reason, that was the only thought that stuck in his head as he listened to them.

 

 “What are you doing, Peter?” His dad’s voice brokered no argument, but Peter, of course, chose to pretend he didn’t know what he meant.

                          

 “Derek has charged me with making the loft a little more hospitable for him. A pet project of mine,” Peter explained, all charm and smooth coolness. The sound of it made something trickle down Stiles’s spine and he shuddered, drawing those eyes toward him unwittingly in the gloom.

 

 “Something to keep you out of trouble?” Stiles’s dad all-but accused, apparently not noticing Peter’s glance in Stiles’s direction or that Stiles had woken.

 

 Peter canted his head a little and regarded the sheriff coolly. He folded his fingers together in front of him as he leaned back on his stool. “Did you really come here at gone midnight to discuss my reparations, Sheriff?”

 

 The Sheriff tensed. “Is that what the last few months have been? Reparations?”

 

 The last few months helping to save Stiles, one way or another, helping Scott and the pack with the influx of monsters in the weeks that had followed the Nogitsune’s defeat. Since the wound Stiles had woken up with on the school floor had opened up in his flesh. The wound that hadn’t gotten better.

 

 “Whatever you want to call it, Derek seems to think I’ll get bored of it and be back to my old tricks sooner rather than later.”

 

 “I came for my son, but now I’m here, I’d like to know what the truth of that is,” the Sheriff demanded, jaw set as he neared the end of his patience, the peak of his desperation.

 

 Peter pushed up from the stool at the island, where he appeared to have been pouring over flooring and bathroom tile samples. He circled around to lean back against the countertop, arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed his guests. “The truth is I like to keep everyone guessing, that way no one is disappointed.”

 

 “Well the truth is, Derek wants to trust you, badly. My son trusted you enough to come with you and fall asleep in your damn apartment and right now, I need to trust you. Are you going to disappoint me?”

 

 Stiles listened to it all with a detached sort of distance, the kind that was eerily familiar to the outside view his flashes of the Nogitsune’s reign over his body took. It was odd, but he was aware of the smallest details now. He swore he saw Peter’s fingers flex around his arms as his eyes, dark with the low light, turned to Stiles fully once more.

 

 “I’ve already assured Stiles I will do my best to help him.”

 

 There was something about the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, perhaps the sheer shock of the rare sincerity in his words but Stiles felt like he snapped to attention, drawn back into his body to regard Peter cautiously. There was also an instinctive tension in his muscles, like a built-in fight or flight reflex, sensing a predator’s gaze that drew him to full attention.

 

Peter’s eyes flicked to him again and Stiles rose, stepping into the kitchen area proper with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. His movement drew his dad’s attention to him for the first time since he’d awoken.

 

 “Stiles,” the Sheriff said and for the first time his voice sounded weary, ragged, his face tired. Stiles’s stomach flipped as he caught the time on the oven display and realised how late it was. Jesus, _he’d_ put that look on his dad’s face and not for the last time.

 

 “Kid,” his dad said softly, so softly, so tired that it twisted like a knife in Stiles’s belly because his dad was always so careful these days, so unwilling to push him. He hated that his dad, that _everyone_ seemed to tread on eggshells around him. He didn’t want eggshells or preferential treatment or any of that. He just wanted to fix this, fix himself and find a way forward to whatever passed for normal nowadays.

 

 “Stiles,” his dad tried again, “you can’t vanish like that on me. You can’t disappear after school and not let me know where you are.” He swallowed, the same way Stiles did when he felt overwhelmed or nervous, his eyes glassy as he studied Stiles, sleep rumpled and wearing Peter Hale’s throw blanket like a poncho.

 

 He sounded almost pained as he added, “we tell each other where we are all the time, no matter what. You know that. Don’t do that to me again.” His voice broke a little at the end and Stiles saw the ghost of everything his dad had gone through with him the last few months flicker across his tired face. Believing Stiles was dying of the same illness that had taken his wife, the night he vanished sleepwalking, the Nogitsune…

 

 The sight of him standing there, pleading with him to be honest without actually saying the words, asking Stiles not to force him to lose him in more ways than one, it made the half-truth he’d concealed in the last few weeks burst out of him like a breath he could no longer hold in.

 

 For better or worse, he was about to sink or swim. His honesty was worth more than a promise not to shut his dad out again, and he knew that.

 

 “I…err…that is…when I woke up, after the Nogitsune was stabbed by the katana, there was this pain. But there wasn’t…I mean I looked and there was nothing there. I thought it was like…an echo or something. Or a pulled muscle even.” He glanced to Peter, who had already heard this. “When I looked there was this wound right through my chest to my back, right where Kira had stabbed _him_ but tiny, barely noticeable at first except…it’s not getting better.”

 

 “It doesn’t _bleed_ , precisely,” Peter continued when Stiles and his dad just looked at each other, equal parts horrified and lost. “But it smells of blood and rot and illness. It’s a subtle scent, not like that of an actual wounded person. It’s not natural. Not something even werewolves come across very often.”

 

 Which answered Stiles’s unasked question about how Scott hadn’t noticed it. He wondered if Derek would’ve been able to, had Stiles been around him, or if it was just a Scott thing, because he wasn’t fully in control of his werewolf senses even now. It was supernatural, magical perhaps even, something Scott wouldn’t have known to look for. The thought made Stiles feel a little bit better, a nicer alternative to the thought that maybe Scott and the others just didn’t care. Even though he knew logically that was ludicrous.

 

 “My best guess is, you and the Nogitsune were still connected somehow, by the way he used a part of you to create that clone. Enough that the fatal blow to that form affected you too,” Peter said.

 

 Stiles straightened up, in defiance of the nausea pulsing through him at the idea of still being connected to the Nogitsune somehow. That thought was worse than dying, worse than pain and suffering. A nervous, slightly hysterical laugh bubbled out of him at that horrifying thought, that the Nogitsune still had his claws in him somehow, just like all the creatures he kept dreaming about.

 

 “Is there room in that triskelion urn for me?”

 

 A small smile stretched across Peter’s lips. “There’s definitely no room in there for your wilful mind.” He looked down to his tile samples and catalogue pages spread out across the island and carefully tidied them up, Stiles thought to avoid his dad’s eyes. Then, without looking up from his task Peter murmured, “Even if there were, you’re human, though you might not feel it. It wouldn’t work on you.”

 

 Stiles drew forward slowly, coming to stand between his dad and Peter, mind fluttering from one thought to another. After the silence became too much to bear, he asked carefully, “so what do we do now?”

 

 The Sheriff was the one who answered. He dragged his hand across the back of his neck, through his short hair with a tired sigh, “I gather the pack.” He hesitated then, if only for a brief moment. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think it’s safer if you stay here.”

 

 Stiles blinked. He would have argued, he’d never been one to stay put when things crept out of the darkness and yet… He felt more at ease than he had in months. Just how many months now had it been since the sacrifice that had changed things forever?

 

 He nodded slowly.

 

 “I’ll keep him out of trouble, Sheriff,” Peter said lightly.

 

 The Sheriff snorted. “Just keep yourself out of trouble in the process,” he said warningly, before reaching to gently squeeze Stiles’s shoulder on his way out the door.

 

 Before the stillness that followed his dad’s departure could grow tense or stale, Stiles walked to the coffee machine to help himself to some from the fresh pot he’d seen steaming. “So, am I your reparations or your new pet project to keep you out of trouble?” he asked, trying for aloofness.

 

 Peter’s smile was dazzling, his eyes glittering with the soft muted lights of the fixings hanging down over the kitchen area. “You have quite the penchant for mischief yourself. I think you are my equal in that. Perhaps it you who needs the pet project, Stiles?”

 

 Something about the way he said that made Stiles’s cheeks burn, his skin hum a little with nervous energy that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was so startling, almost a foreign sensation. Stiles cleared his throat as he tried valiantly to hang on to the uneasiness that had filled him since his dad has mentioned gathering the others here.

 

 It felt a little like being caught out lying, having the problems he’d been hiding from them all exposed but more than that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that was gripping him.

 

 “Scott and my dad, they’ll do everything he takes to save me,” Stiles murmured quietly.

 

 “We all have that in common, Stiles, every person who tried to save you from the Nogitsune.” Peter’s voice was usually full of mystery or teasing or derisiveness depending on who was engaging him, but then he sounded so raw that Stiles lifted his head to find his eyes on Stiles’s face.

 

 “Maybe,” said Stiles, “but they will do it to the exclusion of everything else. No matter what the cost but I just…” He set his jaw, not knowing how else to phrase the bone-deep need coiling through him. “Just get it out of me, whatever it is, whatever the connection that’s still there, I want it gone. I don’t care how you do it. Make sure it’s done.”

 

 He felt like perhaps Peter was the only one who could understand that. He was the only person who had experienced being trapped inside his own body, that understood returning to that state would be worse than death.

 

 The thought must have been visible on his face because Peter just gave a short nod as he held his gaze.

 

*

 

 Stiles shivered, though not really from the cold, although it was hardly warm down in the Hale vault. Peter had instinctively found and lit candles, lighting the cavernous space with the dance of their flames. Their shadows played tricks at the corners of Stiles’s eyes though as he perused the bookshelves covering one vast wall, imbuing him with a sense of unease. He coughed at the dust that spilled from the top of a book as he carefully extracted it from the shelf and leafed through it.

 

 Peter was carefully taking stock of the other treasures hidden away, seeing if there was anything that could help them, while Scott sat with his back to the shelves, surrounded by the books they thought might be useful. He glanced up at Stiles often though and when Stiles caught him looking, he lowered the heavy, ancient book in his hands.

 

 “What is it?” he asked cautiously.

 

 Scott looked sheepish. “I…sorry, just…this place gives me the creeps.”

 

Across the room, Peter glowered at him, but said nothing and Stiles offered Scott a small smile.

 

 When his dad had brought the pack to Peter’s apartment, their protectiveness, their concern had seemed to consume the distance that had grown between them. It hadn’t erased it entirely, none of them were the same people they had been before, Stiles realised, but they’d come when they realised he needed them, which was all that mattered.

 

 Lydia and Kira had invaded his house in the name of studying twice already since that night. And they had sworn on pain of death not to tell a soul he’d helped to paint their toenails. Scott and Derek meanwhile, who’d both been pretty shitty alphas on their own, seemed to have come together to make one decent one. That alone filled him with hope, in spite of the ache in his chest and the shadows at the edges of his vision that reminded him of that dark place in his dreams.

 

 His chest had tightened with fear around his pounding heart since Peter had revealed the vault, a surprise to say the least and lead them down here. It hadn’t loosened yet. He felt a sense of foreboding down here that was too reminiscent of the basement at _Eichen House._ He licked his dry lips as he held his fears at bay.

 

 “Any luck finding Deaton?”

 

 Scott shook his head.

 

 “Typical,” Stiles mumbled bitterly. Just when he had a use for the cryptic old bastard.

 

 He set the book he’d flicked through back on the shelf. It was a summary of werewolf illnesses and while it might prove useful in the future, it wasn’t relevant to their current research topic. As he set it back on the shelf though, he fumbled it and in his frenzy to catch the likely irreplaceable tome a white-hot pain shot through the supernatural tear in his flesh and he froze, half-doubled over and braced against the shelf like an old man.

 

 “Stiles!” Scott gasped, reaching for the hem of Stiles’s shirt and tugging it up before Stiles could protest.

 

 “I’m okay!” he protested quickly, feeling weak and mortified and useless, so sick of being the cause of everyone’s worry, the weak link in the pack. He just wanted to be better.

 

 He swallowed as the fresh burst of pain receded back into the familiar dull ache. It wasn’t the pain that worried him, it was the absence of it. Every morning he twisted around carefully to glance at it in the mirror from both angles. Every morning the large, mottled yellow-red wound and its smaller counterpart on his chest had stretched a little farther across his skin, hurting a little less. It was as if the more it grew, the further distanced from everything he became.

 

 Scott’s horrified silence told him he’d noticed its growth in the few days since he’d glimpsed it at Peter’s apartment and Stiles winced, twisting out of Scott’s grasp without really moving.

 

 “I don’t get why I can’t just bite you,” Scott whispered dejectedly, “that was our plan when the Nogitsune had you before, I don’t see why it won’t work now.”

 

 “Because, as ever, Scott, you’re not listening,” Peter said exasperatedly as he came to stand beside them. “This isn’t really about the Nogitsune, or at least, not anymore. He isn’t a part of Stiles any longer, there is no possessing spirit. This is like an echo of him, an imprint he left behind.”

 

 As Stiles righted himself with a grimace, he caught Peter’s eye and thought maybe his words were as much for his benefit as for Scott’s. Whose heart was in the right place but, yeah, didn’t listen. Stiles didn’t listen either, but for different reasons and Scott had a lot going on too in his own head…

 

 “I’ve only ever heard of this kind of wound, never seen it for myself before. What I know about it is limited.”

 

 Bitter in his deflation, Scott demanded, “So what exactly makes you the expert in all this then?”

 

 Peter sighed and for a second Stiles was sure he could _see_ Peter cursing his baser instincts for ever trying to recruit Scott as a beta, back when this all began, before he’d fully recovered himself.

 

 “It doesn’t make me an expert, it makes me your best shot.” He reached across Stiles and pulled down a few more books. “These books make up our history, written records of our ancestors’ experience in guardians of the Nemeton. If there are any records of the stories I heard about as a child, they’ll be here.”

 

 Stiles wanted to protest that they didn’t have time but he felt numb and tired.

 

 “They’re the most useful thing in here at any rate,” Peter added, “unless we can repurpose a few dried herbs or Japanese tea.”

 

 Scott didn’t seem appeased by his small-talk or topic diversion. He stared at Peter hard. “We need more of a plan than research mode and fighting off every monster that stumbles in like we’ve been doing. It’s getting worse! Stiles doesn’t have the kind of time you’re talking about. Kira’s mom couldn’t find anything and she’s over a thousand years old, what makes you think the Hales knew anything about it?”

Peter hesitated and when he finally answered, he had eyes only for Stiles. “Noshiko said this isn’t typical of a possession of a Nogitsune, that it isn’t personal to him. So if it’s not the Nogitsune and not the katana that Kira used, then there’s only one supernatural element you and the Nogitsune ever came into contact with that could have affected you.”

 

 The memory of ice-cold water and dark dreams and riddles flowed into Stiles’s mind unbidden and he swallowed thickly. Because how had the Nogitsune gotten to him in the first place? What had opened that door?

 

 “The Nemeton,” Stiles muttered. “You think it’s something to do with the sacrifice we made?”

 

 Peter studied him carefully before he spoke, as he’d done often in the last few days. Searching looks of quiet contemplation that hinted he might actually care about Stiles’s feelings, at least long enough to consider his words more carefully.

 

 “The Nemeton is connected to all things in _Beacon Hills_ , the trees, the animals, even the people to some extent. Think of it like a river with many different branches. It doesn’t flow _into_ them all but it has branches reaching out to almost touch every one. When you made your sacrifice, you became fully connected with that branch and the Nemeton became the river along which the Nogitsune travelled to you. The Nogitsune rode the current of its power to you,” Peter answered. “I believe when the Nogitsune was pierced by the katana, it tore a hole in the place where it was still partially connected to you. It’s like a crack in the dam holding the Nemeton’s power in, through which it is now spilling.”

 

 Stiles licked his lips nervously as he processed that and the logic it held, the bone-deep _knowledge_ that this was right. This was true. He felt it, the same way he’d known his mom had died before anyone had even said the words to him all those years ago.

 

 “What the hell does that even mean?” Scott demanded sharply, “speak fucking English, dude, what does that mean?”

 

 “It means that all the monsters that’ve been showing up since the Nogitsune was ripped outta me are drawn to the power pooling outside of the Nemeton’s control. It means the Nemeton’s power is spilling into me, and it’ll eventually consume me.” He peered up at Peter from under his lashes. “Am I right?”

 

 Peter wore a grim expression that was as good as a confirmation. “They are drawn to it and until we find a way to block off that hole, they will keep coming.”

 

 Scott looked between them, his incensed irritation with Peter dwindling somewhat as something else seemed to dawn on him. Whatever it was, however, Stiles didn’t get the chance to ask because the silence that consumed them was interrupted by Scott’s phone buzzing. Scott’s gaze lingered on Stiles for a split-second longer before he looked at it.

 

 “Derek has caught the scent of something at the old train station,” he said as he read through the text. As he spoke, it buzzed again in his hand. “He says he thinks it’s a… _wendigo_?”

 

 Peter winced. “You’d better back him up. Stiles and I can finish up here.”

 

 It was a roundabout way of saying he’d make sure Stiles got home safely, Stiles supposed, because logically, if the supernatural nasties were all drawn here by the Nemeton’s power leaking out of him, he’d be their eventual target, right?

 

 Thinking about it that way, the old train station wasn’t that far from the school…

 

 Eyeing Peter warily, Scott said to Stiles, “I’ll swing by as soon as me and Derek have wrapped this up. We’ll order in pizza or something, yeah?” That was Scott’s indirect way of reassuring Stiles he was there for him, wasn’t abandoning him. It was something that his dad, Scott and Lydia had all been overly paranoid about, since they’d realised the gravity of what Stiles had been hiding from them. But Stiles thought this was also Scott’s way of warning Peter that he had his eye on him.

 

 His phone buzzed again, just as he was dashing back up the steps and out of sight.

 

 Stiles dragged his hand over his face, mindless of the dust and grime on his fingers from handling the previously untouched books.

 

 “These are the most hopeful ones,” he said as he gestured to the books in small haphazard piles by his feet. “They have information on infections and folklore about magically instilled diseases that eat you from the inside out, so if they’re anywhere in your family’s disturbing collection they’ll be in there.” He gave a hollow laugh. “Well I guess that’s my bedtime reading planned out for the next few nights.”

 

Peter’s piercing blue eyes swept across his face. “That sort of hopeless despondency doesn’t suit you.”

 

 “I’m just tired, alright?” Stiles said sharply. “I’m sick of worrying my dad into an early grave, and Scott and Lydia trying to fix me when they’ve just lost Allison and, God, even _Derek_ is being nice to me and they’re all drowning me under the pressure to be miraculously better so they don’t have to fix me.”

 

 He found himself breathing hard after the rush of words had left him, breathless with the relief of it all spilling out but also for not stopping for breath once. He didn’t even realise he’d been running his fingers through his hair until Peter took a step forward, grasping his forearm. His fingers were strong but gentle, urging his arm down away from his head. Stiles was so stunned by the touch, from Peter, who rarely touched anyone unless he had to, that he didn’t even flinch, just stared down at the place Peter held him.

 

 As he watched, fine black tendrils crept across his skin and up Peter’s arm. He saw Peter’s brow twitch, like a barely concealed flinch but long after the web-like lines vanished, Peter held onto him.

 

 Stiles lifted his gaze to find Peter staring at him.

 

 “Better?” Peter breathed and Stiles swallowed. He hadn’t even let his dad this close in weeks, except to bring him back down from panic when he woke from a nightmare. His body hadn’t felt enough like his own to let someone share it even this much. Peter though, he’d reached in and done it anyway like a firm reassurance that it was okay to touch, to feel, a reminder that Stiles _could_ feel, that he was still soft and tangible, not something that would infect whatever he touched.

 

 Like he knew Stiles was strong enough for it, like he knew he needed it.

 

 For a brief moment, Peter’s thumb brushed against the inside of his elbow and Stiles shuddered, but even before he’d registered the movement, Peter was drawing away.

 

 “Let’s take this grunt work to go,” Peter said, a little husky in his attempt of casual as he reached for the books on the ground. “There’s a diner en route to Ca sa del Stilinski that should have speedy service even at this time of night.”

 

 There was more of his teasing, light air back to his voice, trying to make light of the situation, that enabled Stiles to find his footing alittle as he replied, “if you think I’m too polite to eat on your dime, buddy, you’ve got another thing coming.”

 

 The subtle quirk of Peter’s lips was devastatingly charming. Stiles wondered if it always had been, or if that was something that was becoming more appealing the more he saw of the man behind the mask.

 

 Something niggled at him all the way to the diner though, something that had been gnawing at him since Peter had saved him from the wolf-vampire thing and of course, his mouth couldn’t contain his thoughts for long. “Why are you doing this?” he asked as Peter started to climb out of the car.

 

 The question paused Peter mid-movement and he met Stiles’s eyes. “One of the many talents we have in common, compartmentalising for the sake of sanity here in _Beacon Hills_ ,” he replied lightly.

 

 Stiles remained unmoved. “Why are you doing _all_ this, for me? I don’t get it. I get that maybe you tolerate me more out of all the others, except maybe Derek and maybe we have the same sarcastic, semi-bitter humour but we’ve never been friends and you’re going out of the way to help me, like I matter.” He said it all almost in one-breath, as if the floodgates had burst open and he couldn’t stop.

 

 He’d been getting a vibe of _safety_ from Peter ever since he’d realised what was happening and he didn’t get why, couldn’t decide whether he trusted it until he knew for sure where it came from.

 

 “If you feel so vehemently that I’m helping you for nefarious purposes, then why did you agree to come?” Peter asked coolly.

 

 “Because I know logically that I need to eat,” Stiles replied automatically, “Because sometimes a change of scenery helps and because you make me feel like I need to keep talking to you. For whatever reason, you make me feel better about all this.” Because of the way he treated him, because of the unspoken understanding of Stiles’s situation that no one else had. But he didn’t know _why_ and that bothered him.

 

 Peter looked surprised but pleased. “No one has said that to me before.”

 

 Stiles felt something in him relax at the glib comment. For someone so practiced in deception, Peter was brazen in his honesty sometimes, even if, to the untrained eye, it was often disguised as falsehood. “Well don’t let it go to your head, I know you’d never hurt me, but I also know you’re sharp and devious.” He eyed Peter carefully. “And yet for all that, you give me this feeling like I can trust you.”

 

 Relaxing back into the driver’s seat of his own sleek _Cadillac_ , Peter regarded him with a typically unreadable expression. “What exactly is it that makes you say that? Even my estranged nephew doesn’t trust me.”

 

 “Derek trusts you plenty,” Stiles scoffed, “he’s just guarded. I’ve always been pretty good at reading people. You helped save me–”

 

 “A lot of people tried to save you, _have_ saved you. You mean a lot to a lot of people.”

 

 Stiles continued as if the interruption had never happened. “You know I’m this… _beacon_ for dangerous creatures right now but you’re still here.”

 

 “Perhaps I’m simply sticking close for the opportune moment to take advantage of the situation as always,” Peter offered lightly. “Don’t look for your knight in shining armour with me, Stiles, you’ll end up disappointed.”

 

 Stiles couldn’t help but feel something in him startle at the use of that word for the second time in relation to Peter’s relations with people. He frowned. “I don’t need a hero,” he said, a little stung and confused and desperate to just lay it all bare and deal with the raw truth of it all. He flung his arms to the side in an exposed gesture as he proclaimed, “this is it. If you want something from me, take it. I won’t stop you. You’ll be doing me a favour in all honesty, saving me from drawing anymore monsters here that might hurt my friends and my dad even more than the _last_ monster that used me did.”

 

 When Peter said nothing, Stiles said more fiercely, if a little more quietly, “You talk to me like it’s okay to be broken, like it’s ok to be different to _not_ be the person I was before. You don’t expect me to just be better because it’d be easier for you.” He just breathed for a moment, slow and steady, then he whispered, “you know what it’s like to be trapped in your own body.”

 

 Peter was quiet for a long time, before turning his gaze back to the windscreen and the warm, bright light spilling out from the windows of the diner into the cool darkness surrounding them. He stared for some time at the subtle movement within, the orange-hued light stretching toward them across the parking lot like beckoning fingers.

 

 When he eventually found his voice, it was soft and contemplative, unlike anything Stiles had ever heard from him before. “Being trapped in a world of loneliness, longing for hope, for a way out or a kind touch, loneliness and my own sadness drove me to bitterness. It consumed me. It made me what I am now.”

 

 He turned his head to look at Stiles with blue eyes gone dark from the low light and so very human. “You’re different. You’re stronger than before because you survived one of the worst fates imaginable and you are overcoming it. But where I was consumed by the darkness, you’re bettering it, every day that you wake up and live.”

 

 “What I’m doing doesn’t feel like living,” Stiles murmured distractedly, “living shouldn’t be this hard.”

 

 Peter canted his head, so close to him in the warm intimacy of the car. “Being the ones that survive death is always hard.”

 

 Stiles thought of everything that Peter had lost. He’d watched his family burn to death, had been burned himself, then he’d been forced to live with those memories for years, trapped inside his own head.

 

 “How fucked up is it that you’re the only one I feel vaguely human around?” Stiles asked, almost rhetorically.

 

 Peter looked at him warily before saying, “I’m not a good man.”

 

 “Maybe not in the traditional ways,” Stiles agreed, looking out to the diner too now, thinking. “You’ve done horrible things. I know Scott doesn’t believe you didn’t know yourself when you killed Laura, was out of your mind when you carved up those animals with the revenge spiral. I’m not sure it’s as simple as a desire for power either though, to be honest, and I think what happened to you could’ve done a lot to twist your mental state in the first few weeks you were able to move again, especially around the full moon. But even excluding that situation, you’ve done things, things that have hurt people.” Stiles moistened his dry lips. “But since I was introduced to the world of werewolves, I stopped seeing things in black and white.”

 

 “Our world has a way of making the young grow up too fast,” Peter agreed wistfully. “Laura never should’ve been alpha, Derek never should’ve been forced by an older woman or even forced to kill his first love. I know you didn’t believe my account of those events by the way.”

 

 Stiles shrugged. “I believe that just like Derek, you have this façade you show to the world to keep your guilt from showing, maybe even to convince yourself you have nothing to be guilty for. I know you _edited_ that story, maybe you even believe it, because the truth makes you feel so awful you can’t stand it.”

 

 At that, Peter pulled back a little. “Feeling bad about doing something wrong doesn’t make it less wrong.”

 

 “No, but it makes you human,” Stiles said softly as he met his gaze once more, swearing the space between them had shrunk even more. “Realising you’re wrong makes you human. It makes you want to do better and even if you fail, the fact that you tried means more than not trying at all.”

 

 He thought of the conversation he’d overheard with his dad, where Peter’s actions with the Nogitsune and thereafter had been labelled as ‘reparations’. Maybe some things Peter had done weren’t as cut and dry as they seemed, particularly with Laura’s death, and maybe the things he _had_ done couldn’t all be wiped clean, but in his way, he was trying and that was what mattered.

 

 “You’re a fascinating young man, Stiles,” Peter whispered, eyes shining.

 

 Stiles swallowed, unable to help the way his eyes moved to Peter’s adam’s apple, as he mimicked the motion.

 

 “Shall we grab something to eat?” Peter asked softly, ending the moment suspended between them with such composure that it startled Stiles back to himself.

 

 Stiles nodded, briefly lost for words at the dizzying yet so _real_ confirmation of his trust in Peter, who he followed into the warm light and beckoning scent of good food. There was a spark of understanding between them that no one else possessed, trust of course, but also something else he didn’t quite understand. All he knew was that as they returned to the car with their food to go, and he brought the take away coffee cup to his lips and sipped, Peter glanced to him as if he couldn’t help it and Stiles’s stomach flipped.

 

 It was a pulse of excitement, of heat in the cold darkness he was suspended in. The first time he’d felt alive in months. It was terrifying yet exhilarating both and he wanted more.

 

*

 

  _The basement was filled with a familiar bone-chilling sound. A voice that was slurred by fangs and thick with otherworldly venom._

_“What gets bigger, the more you take away?”_

_It started slow, a whisper echoing through the darkness, but it grew louder and louder until it was roaring in Stiles’s head._

_“WHAT GETS BIGGER, THE MORE YOU TAKE AWAY?”_

_Stiles’s mouth opened in a scream that was soundless but tore at his throat regardless. He squeezed his eyes shut in his usual method to wake himself but when he opened his eyes, he found himself sprawled on the floor of the basement. The steel-jaw trap bit into his leg, sending agony splitting through muscle and bone, freezing him with the white-hot shock of it. But even as he stared down, he saw the yellow-red wound that had plagued him for weeks, stark against his pale skin that almost shone deathly pale._

_Sharp, biting pain tore at the edges. It paralysed him in place as long, spider-like fingers tore through his chest, claws digging into the flesh around it as if something were trying to pull itself out…_

 

* 

*

 

 Stiles jerked awake with a flash of panic. He slumped back in the dining room chair though as the lights from the house reminded him where he was, what was reality and what was not. His heart still thundered in his chest now, cold sweat prickling down his neck and he swallowed as he tried to gather himself, only to see Derek watching him carefully across the table.

 

 It’d been weeks, over a month really since they’d started going through the books from the Hale vault with a fine-toothed comb. This was the last of them, spread out between him and Derek, who was on ‘Stiles duty’ as Stiles had bitterly named it. It was a routine that had been established after the flesh-eater and then the wendigo had made a beeline for Stiles, or at least the energy leaking from him, the untapped potential to dark creatures that would risk a chance.

 

 His dad had already rung earlier to say he’d be working late, trying to deal with the mess the wendigo left behind. Everyone who wasn’t working or dealing with the aftermath of the supernatural invasion was trying to find a way to close the door left open through his flesh. The ever-increasing darkness eating away at him, that he felt less and less each day.

 

 “Alright?” Derek asked, voice carefully neutral.

 

 Stiles winced as he shifted in his chair. Falling asleep at his dining table hadn’t exactly worked wonders for his already sleep-deprived body. He ached everywhere. Everywhere except the almost numb, eerily cool stretch of skin that, as of that morning, had looked like an oval of mottled yellow and red stretching up between his shoulder blades. It’s smaller counterpart across his sternum was almost the size of his fist now.

 

 When his dad had glimpsed it before he’d left that morning, Stiles had joked that it looked like the _Eye of Sauron_ but his dad had only looked worried and Stiles’s laughter had sounded hollow even to his own ears.

 

 He was scared. He had near-enough to sensation now in the wound that kept growing, and the cold numbness was almost worst than the pain. The less he felt, the less time he knew he had, the worse the nightmares got. He dreaded sleep now and generally tried to avoid it at all costs. When he did finally give in, he’d curl up on the sofa with the TV on, his dad in the chair or. If Peter was on guard duty, he’d often take the chair when his dad was absent.

 

 Whenever sleep took him now, he saw the whites of the monster’s eyes in the darkness and felt the tight grasp of their claws around his throat until panic spiked with asphyxiation. He felt like he was buzzing with energy, with constant adrenaline trying to escape something that was coming _from_ him and it wasn’t much longer before it either consumed him or he burned out.

 

 Derek looked like he wanted to say something. He had this silent, brooding, concerned look whenever he sat with Stiles, which was a bit tiring in all honesty. He was, however, a focussed researcher, so he and Stiles had eliminated a lot of avenues that way. They were just running out of books and time.

 

 “Peter asked me if I could cover his shifts watching you for a day or two,” Derek said carefully at last.

 

 Stiles looked up at that in surprise. Peter had been round more often than not, usually he brought food. Last night he’d shown up with a new _Xbox_ game that he’d said looked _‘interesting’_ which he then didn’t even so much as look at, but semi-watched Stiles play whilst sipping coffee and flicking through some of the books from the armchair.

 

 It had clearly been a gift, though neither of them had identified it as such and Peter had seemed… _content_. _Stiles_ had felt content, eager for him to come back, even. He would never say it aloud, but he enjoyed the witty back and forth of the banter between them, the understanding companionship. The camaraderie he felt in him. He liked his company, enough that the idea of Peter asking to be excused of it hurt more than he wanted to admit.

 

 Derek may have been quiet, but he was more observant than most people gave him credit for. He met Stiles’s eyes with a knowing look. “It’s weird, because he’s always been asking me in a roundabout way if I want a night off or anything, like he’d rather be here than at home. He hasn’t even been nagging me to look at the tile selections like he usually does.”

 

 Stiles blinked at him, feeling impossibly young and exposed under Derek’s gaze. “He didn’t say where he was going?”

 

 “No. Only…” Derek winced, “only not to leave your safety up to Scott.”

 

 The stupid, abandoned, hurt feeling in Stiles’s chest abated somewhat. Peter had said that to him as well, when Stiles had prodded and asked why he was helping so much. Peter had made quips about Scott’s incompetency and how his apartment was too quiet to work in, how the Hale books were already here, but Stiles had been sure Peter seemed to enjoy his company as much as he did, even considering the circumstances.

 

 With him there, Stiles felt happily distracted from the sense of impending doom he felt the rest of the time he wasn’t around. He felt alive in the simplest of terms, safe and somehow he thought Peter felt that too. So why had he gone?

 

 “He just said that we were running out of time,” Derek said and Stiles licked his lips thoughtfully. Peter had still been there just that morning, before Derek’s _shift_. He’d also caught a glimpse of Stiles’s chest and back at the same time as the Sheriff had, when Stiles had walked into the living room pulling his shirt on. It hadn’t been an absent-minded act in his urgency to get downstairs for breakfast before Peter _signed off_ , definitely not.

 

 “So he’s going to do something,” Stiles murmured, mostly to himself, mind racing, grasping at all the possibilities.

 

 Derek answered anyway. “Peter is a lot of things. I don’t…I don’t _think_ he really did kill Laura purely in search of power, not like Scott believes. It’s hard to imagine what it must’ve been like for him, but I know in times of great stress the wolf takes over, at least for born wolves. The only times he’s ever talked about Laura I could see that look in his eye, like being lost to the wilderness. But even in spite of that, whatever anyone believes, whatever else he has indisputably done, he’s clever and resourceful. Even when he’s dealt the shittiest cards, he makes them work in his favour.”

 

 Stiles bristled. “You’re going to tell me not to trust him.” It wasn’t a question.

 

 Derek surprised him.

 

 “I’m saying he’s taken… _interest_ in you for a long time. He’s made a promise to help you and I think he’ll find a way, whatever the cost.”

 

 “You’re saying _to_ trust him?”

 

 Derek sat back in his chair, closing the book he’d been poring over. “You guys had been busy, with the sacrifices and the Nogitsune and everything else, before all this started. You haven’t seen him. He’s…he’s been different. And part of that, I think, is watching me give up my alpha powers for Cora, but I think part of it is also you.”

 

 When Stiles only stared at him, confused, Derek gave an uncomfortable shrug.

 

 “You have this way about you. You’re…” He searched for the right words, before eventually settling on, “You inspire people to be… _more_. You made me want to be better than I was, some angry, lost kid. It’s why we all came after you when the Nogitsune took you, Stiles. I don’t think you realise the affect you have on the people around you.”

 

 Stiles sighed. “I think it’s called frustration–”

 

 “It’s called motivation,” Derek cut across him, ironically sounding a little frustrated. “You never give up and you’ll do anything for the people you care about. I think that kind of loyalty and tenacity is a rare thing nowadays.” He hesitated then, his thumb grazing the edge of the closed book before him. “And maybe if you see some good in Peter, then there’s hope for him yet.”

 

 Derek really wanted that for Peter, wanted hope for him, for them all, Stiles could see that in his eyes.

 

*

 

 Three days after Peter’s disappearance, Stiles was attacked out on the field at lacrosse practice after school. In broad daylight. Stiles had been on the sidelines, digging a bottle of water out of his bag when he’d seen it and the shock of its audacity, the sight of a reptilian creature that would’ve put _Jackson_ to shame in afternoon sun under the bleachers made him freeze. It took a blow to the jaw so strong it split his lip and sent pain blooming through his face, for his survival instincts to kick back in. He’d swung his lacrosse stick at it, the glancing blow enough to distract it, enough for Scott to take it down.

 

 Now in his kitchen, Stiles pressed an ice pack to the his jaw, staring into the living room where his dad had passed out exhausted in his chair. He’d passed the cover up of the big lizard-thing to Parrish this time, while Scott was dead to the world on the couch, the Wii-mote still dangling from his fingers.

 

 The dangers that the Nemeton leak in his body was causing seemed to be taking its toll on his friends and his dad.

 

 With the pounding in his face sufficiently numbed for the time-being, Stiles set the ice-pack in the sink and stepped out onto the porch, leaving the back door open behind him. He eased himself down onto the porch step, his neck stiff from the creature’s blow earlier as he stared down his driveway, watching old Mrs Clever opposite trying to coerce her stubborn cat back in for the night. He could hear Scott snoring from where he sat but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t even attempt sleep.

 

 He knew what would be waiting for him when he closed his eyes and sometimes he worried that _that_ was how he would go, locked in his nightmares, swallowed up by them forever when the Nemeton’s power finally devoured him whole. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the cool night air on his face whisk the sleepiness away. When he opened his eyes again, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

 

 “ _Holy_ …” he clamped his teeth tight together around his almost wheezy gasp, shaking his head as his heart pounded. “Jesus, Peter, what the hell are you doing you asshole?”

 

 “Wondering what madness has consumed you in the last three days that has you out here unprotected?” Peter said, looking almost annoyed.

 

 “I’ve hardly gone far,” Stiles said, gesturing over his shoulder back into the house. “Scott would be out here in a shot if I called him.”

 

 Face set in a grim expression, Peter stalked toward him and the next Stiles knew, he was looming over him, claws flexed and prickling _just_ enough to scratch at Stiles’s throat. Stiles flinched on instinct, even though he never once looked away from Peter’s stern face.

 

 “Now you’re dead,” Peter murmured darkly. “The last time you let your guard down you nearly got eaten.”

 

 “I doubt that thing would’ve taken more than a nibble,” Stiles said, trying to make light of it, if only to banish the unusual, uncomfortably scathing look from Peter’s face. “I’m too chewy, with not enough fat.”

 

 Peter didn’t smile, but he did slowly relax and ease onto the porch steps beside Stiles, watching as his elderly neighbour resorted to a box of treats to bribe her cat in. She was a patient old woman, Stiles would give her that, and smart too. _Beacon Hills_ was a dangerous enough place right now for _people_ at night, much less loving, if stubborn, old cats.

 

 At last the cat slunk toward her, brushing against her legs as if it were conceding, and the pair disappeared behind the door.

 

 “She’s always had cats,” Stiles said wistfully. “Once when I was a kid, one of her cats had a kitten and I begged my mom to let me have one. She said cats were too independent for me, that I’d scare it off with my tenacity.” He smiled distantly, even though the expression pulled at his busted lip and throbbing jaw. “She said I was a bit like a cat, independent but affectionate, winding my way around her legs despite my self-sufficient nature.”

 

 He thought that was quite a fair assessment of him to be honest. He did alright on his own when his dad was really busy or his friends were, but he liked _people_. He liked comfort, he was tactile and sometimes maybe even a little hungry for attention. When he was a kid, he’d liked to pretend he was one of those cats, sprawled out on his belly in the sun without a care in the world, with someone who loved him calling out for his attention.

 

 “You’re hurt,” Peter said, drawing him from his reverie, his voice softer now. Stiles turned his face in time to see Peter gesture at his chin. “The latest unwelcome visitor to _Beacon Hills_?”

 

“Yeah, you missed Jackson Mark 2.0,” Stiles said bitterly, touching gingerly at his bruised jaw. “Clocked me good before Scott got to it. He's been on hyper-alert lately, his senses are off the chart. Derek's been helping him hone it more and they stopped a rogue omega before it even crossed the town border the other day. Kira and Lydia have been working on these self-defence classes too, which, you know, maybe I need to get in on? Lydia got a couple of good swings in on that thing before it ran under the bleachers, where Scott took it out before anyone important got a good look. I’m not even sure what story we’re running with this time…”

 “You sound more energetic since last I saw you.”

 

 Stiles shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Probably the sleep-deprivation and too much Adderall, I’m a bit jittery. Everyone else is strung out from exhaustion too and Derek and I already finished going through the Hale secret library. I’ve resorted to internet searches but I can’t focus. I feel restless, I guess. I…I finished the game you _loaned_ me. Thanks by the way, although I gotta admit, I can’t imagine you sitting at an _Xbox_.”

 

 “You have me there, but you are quite a vision when you focus on something you’re interested in, it’s almost as engaging sight as watching you drink coffee.”

 

 Stiles was so stunned by the simple honesty there, Peter admitting he’d bought him a gift, that he almost missed the rest. When it registered, his face coloured, skin tingling in excitement rather than dread or foreboding.

 

 He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever felt that way.

 

 “Can I see it?” Peter asked eventually, hesitantly, as if he were reluctant to steer the conversation back to darker places. It was another sign that he was interested in Stiles’s happiness, his conversation, rather than getting this whole situation sorted as quickly as possible.

 

 Stiles was sure he wasn’t just wishful thinking now. He was, however, equally reluctant to drift onto darker topics. He felt the unease creep back in like the draft through an open door, but then, if Peter was back and in a good spirits, then surely that meant his trip had been a success?

 

 Exhaling unsteadily, Stiles turned his back to Peter, bunching his hoody and t-shirt up enough for the night air and Peter’s gaze to glance across the wound there. The elliptical shape now stretched up to reach between his shoulder-blades, almost two hands long, completely numb.

 

 Stiles hadn’t dared touch it for days. He couldn’t even feel the fabric of his clothes against it anymore, couldn’t feel the air against it right at that moment. It felt dead, only he knew that was the opposite. It was _buzzing_ with life, with the Nemeton’s energy, every day the leak getting bigger and bigger.

 

 Without saying a word, Peter’s strong, deft fingers hovered around it. Stiles could _just_ feel them close to the skin the Nemeton hadn’t yet devoured. Then Peter touched his side, as if to urge him back around so he could examine the exit wound on Stiles’s chest, only Stiles jerked as if prickled with static electricity. He shuddered in the aftermath, even as he turned to face Peter once more.

 

 He felt oddly warm despite the coolness of evening. Peter’s expression was unreadable as he studied his face, seemingly deciphering every inch of Stiles’s own expression. Even when he turned his gaze down to the pseudo exit wound, there was long, awkward moment where Stiles didn’t know where to look. His breath caught right beneath the tainted skin stretching across his sternum. Peter’s fingers were so close to his skin. He swore he could feel the heat of them just above his belly where they lingered, not touching him, yet affecting him somehow even still.

 

 He felt like he was being brought round, awoken from a sleep that had lasted days. Like he’d come alive, so far away from the dark dreams that had plagued him, even in memory when he was awake. The dreams he hadn’t really dared to share for fear they would become more real to him than reality.

 

 When Peter still hadn’t said anything, Stiles licked his dry lips and admitted quietly to the darkness, “the last few nights I’ve dreamt of demons clawing their way out of it.” It was something he hadn’t admitted to anyone, not even his dad. He hadn’t seen the point, when they were all doing everything they could. But now, with Peter this close it had come out almost of its own volition, like this odd, private place between them was a safe place for such secrets.

 

 “Dreams tend to be symbolic, rather than literal,” Peter assured him softly.

 

 “It’s symbolic of the dark thing I’m going to become, just like when the Nogitsune got his claws in me.”

 

 “I don’t think so,” Peter said.

 

 Stiles prickled with defensive annoyance. “I didn’t ask what you thought.”

 

 “No, but you want to, you’re too inquisitive not to,” Peter cut across him easily, tone smooth and unaffected. “I think it’s symbolic of the creatures that would take advantage of the power leaking from you, if they got you, which they won’t. Perhaps a little warning, on the Nemeton’s behalf, its magic is complicated.”

 

 Stiles’s words caught roughly in his throat, a coarse whisper as he breathed, “you can’t know that for–”

 

“I think you’re resilient, brave, determined, have a wicked sense of humour and a malicious streak reserved for those who hurt the ones you care for,” Peter continued as if Stiles had never spoken. His eyes were such a dark blue now, in the light from the porch, that Stiles swore he could see himself reflected in them.

 

 “You’re so self-sacrificing that it baffles me and so damn smart that, quite frankly, it’s attractive.” There was a playful edge there that Stiles appreciated, even if it made him just as awkward as the vehement compliments.

 

 Stiles gave a little nervous laugh that was no more than a breath. “Yeah, well I think you’re a narcissist and a sociopath.”

 

 Peter chuckled softly, eyes glittering at Stiles’s sharp retort without the sting. “Well, to the people I like I can be very, very nice. And I do like you, Stiles.” He hesitated for a heartbeat, eyes drifting down to watch Stiles’s tongue moisten his lips nervously before he spoke again. “I’ve always liked you, but my respect for you has grown recently, along with other things. I pride myself in always knowing what path to take, whatever comes my way, on how to handle anyone I come across but you…I’m not entirely sure how to handle myself around you.”

 

 Stiles felt as if all the air had left his lungs. “Are you going to say something really cliché now, like I make you want to be a better man?” he managed huskily.

 

 Canting his head to the side, Peter regarded him with those dazzling eyes, stubble-rough and hair unkempt, so different to his usual pristine appearance. “Not exactly,” Peter said lightly, “but you make me _want_ , when I haven’t wanted anything in a long time.”

 

 He shifted, leaning in slightly so that Stiles could feel his warm breath on his cold cheeks. He was so close, so warm and he was looking at Stiles the way no one ever had. Making Stiles feel like no one had ever made him feel, even in the din of darkness that threatened to consume everything.

 

 The weeks that had been passed trying to find the cure for the Nemeton’s energy eating away at him like a plague, they’d had their moments of warmth. They’d been interspersed with small, quiet moments that built up to this crescendo of heat filling him now. Many small parts combining to make one insurmountable feeling.

 

 “Ever since I woke up after the fire, I’ve never seen anything that shines as brightly as you,” Peter murmured.

 

 Stiles found himself gravitating toward him, as if Peter were his very own sun. A sun blazing with searing, dangerous, blinding light that could burn him to death and yet only nurtured life in him that he’d once feared he’d lost.

 

 Suddenly, movement behind them made them jerk back and glance up at the back door. Scott was standing, poised on his toes where he’d come dashing out after Stiles, but had halted at the sight of the intimate moment.

 

 “When did you get back?” Scott asked coolly, his brow furrowed as if he didn’t understand what he’d just walked in on.

 

 “Just now,” Peter replied, his casual arrogance returning as he and Stiles both rose to their feet. “Good job I did, I had no idea our alpha’s vigilance was so lacking.

 

 A low, barely audible growl rumbled in Scott’s throat and he took a step forward. Stiles leapt up the steps to him, putting himself between Scott and Peter. “Come on, both of you, I’m tired, _beyond_ tired. I really don’t need any more violence right now. I am like, looking to move to _Disney World_ after this, alright? So can we just… _not_?”

 

 Both wolves seemed to step down without really moving, although the tension remained in their bodies. Stiles glanced between them just to be sure, but when he looked back to Scott, he caught sight of his dad standing in the doorway behind him, a knowing frown on his face.

 

 “I’ve found our missing veterinarian,” Peter said, breaking the silence stretching out into the night.

 

 “What?” Scott asked, confused. “Deaton? Why?”

 

 “I made it a point to find him, when our research led us nowhere,” Peter answered, even though he was looking at Stiles, not Scott. “The Hales have been guardians to the Nemeton for centuries. If anything like this had happened before and they never made note of it, I knew that their emissaries would have.”

 

 Stiles felt something like shaky, choking relief catch in his throat. He almost didn’t dare to believe what he was hearing.

 

 “So has he heard of anything like this before?” the Sheriff asked, his desperation barely contained as he stepped passed Scott, staring at Peter as if he held his life in his hands. “Does he know what to do?”

 

 “That’s why I’m here,” Peter said and Stiles heard the unspoken ‘before I was distracted’ that he omitted. “I believe he may have a way to end this.”

 

*

 

 Deaton had been as cool, calm and cryptic as ever, but at least this time he had shared with the class, which Stiles was grateful for. Though the news of hope, of a clear way forward through the dark fog didn’t fill him with relief like he’d thought it would. On the contrary, in the last two days since Peter and Deaton’s return, Stiles had been full of nothing but anxious energy.

 

 His dad and Parrish had brought him home after school and Stiles had dragged himself up for a shower without comment. He wasn’t even sure what the time was now. Only that he’d been sitting on the end of his bed for some time, only wearing his sweatpants, his shirt still hanging between his fingers as he stared at his crime board, which had been used to brainstorm ‘cures’ of late. He’d been caught in the middle of getting dressed, distracted by his own racing thoughts.

 

  _“We have to close the door, the tiny hole that the initial sacrifice tore open and connected Stiles to the Nemeton,”_ Deaton had said, as enigmatic as ever. Also as impassive, he’d carried on talking right over Stiles’s biting sarcastic remarks. _“Something like this requires both power and sacrifice. Magic likes symmetry and irony both. It must be a fitting sacrifice and a fitting source of power.”_

_“You’re talking like you_ know _we’re not going to like your suggestion,”_ Peter had replied cautiously and Deaton had offered them all a tight smile, the Sheriff, Peter, Scott and finally Stiles himself.

 

  _“I want to use the triskelion urn, made from wood carved from the Nemeton itself and the Nogitsune within. They’re both sources of great power and the Nogitsune would be a fitting sacrifice, considering his presence exacerbated the situation.”_

_“You want to use the Nogitsune as a sacrifice to close the door?”_ Stiles’s words had been almost inaudible, but his horror had come through loud and clear.

 

  _“We’ll bind the spell with other ingredients, they’ll guide the nature of the ritual, maintain the balance but, essentially yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. And I suggest we wait no longer than it takes to gather the other ingredients. We’ve already waited too long as it is…”_

Did nobody else feel how _wrong_ this all was? How foreboding? Stiles shivered as he sat on the end of his bed, cold but suspended in the horrifying crescendo of thoughts that wouldn’t stop, the anticipation of what was to come. Everyone was so damn relieved to have a way forward, to have hope that they could end this that they seemed to be blind to what was about to happen.

 

 He was about to be connected to the Nogitsune once again, however briefly, for whatever purpose and the idea of it made Stiles sick to his stomach. His fingers curled around the fabric in his grasp and he swallowed thickly. Tomorrow, it was tomorrow it would happen, the power of the new moon the perfect timing for a ritual like this Deaton had assured them. Too soon and yet not soon enough.

 

 There was a soft knock at his door that dragged him from his thoughts and he made some incoherent noise of assent. He blinked at the surprisingly bright light spilling in from the hallway. He hadn’t realised his room had gotten so dark while he’d been sitting there.

 

 It had been light when his dad had stopped in, told him half-heartedly that the FBI had stopped by the station, demanding to see him about all the ‘unusual’ activity that had been going on lately. He’d asked Stiles if he wanted to come, if he’d be okay, then told him to get dressed before he caught a chill as he headed out the door alone. He’d promised he wouldn’t be long, but it was dark now and Stiles felt cold as he came back to himself.

 

 “Parrish has just stepped out to back your dad up at the station, they’ve been thorough, it’ll be alright but your dad will be a little longer,” Peter said as he stood in the doorway.

 

 Stiles nodded, processing his words before pulling his shirt over his chilled skin. “So you drew the short straw for the night watch?”

 

 “I don’t think of it in that way, but yes, I’m on guard for the evening,” Peter didn’t cross the threshold. He never did unless Stiles invited him in. It was a sign of respect, Stiles thought and if he weren’t so distracted he might make a vampire joke.

 

 “Thank you for finding Deaton, for…everything, I guess,” he said, crossing the room and reaching for a sweater from the drawer.

 

 “Stiles.” Peter’s voice stopped him in place, his sweater dangling from his fingers as he turned to look at him.

 

 “I am…sorry that I didn’t bring back a more palatable cure,” he said carefully and for once, it sounded as if he weren’t sure what to say. That in itself was unnerving. It told him Peter was as worried as he was, or at least that he understood his concern.

 

 “My dad, he’s just grateful there’s a cure at all,” Stiles murmured so, so quietly. “He’s worried out of his mind but he doesn’t get why I’m so…” He set his jaw, shook his head slightly against the truth he’d been fighting since Deaton had told him the only option he had. He was terrified.

 

 “What if he gets hold of me again, if something goes wrong?” he whispered, more to himself than Peter. “What if I never really crawled out of the place the Nogitsune put me in? What if I’m still there? It was _my_ body he wore when he turned to dust. Maybe we were never separated at all. Maybe this is all just–”

 

 His frantic rambling cut off, along with the surge of panic within him, as Peter’s lips pressed against his. Strong, broad fingers curled at his nape, cupping his throat, thumb brushing against his still aching jaw. His stubble burned Stiles’s still tender mouth and his kiss was fierce but so, so tender that suddenly, Stiles wasn’t cold anymore.

 

 The shirt he’d had hold of slipped from his grasp and pooled at his feet. He reached up to sink his fingers into Peter’s hair, hold him there as something in him just broke. Everything that the numb, exhausted nothingness had been smothering surged forward like the tide of power leaking through him from the Nemeton.

 

 An almost hurt sound was dragged out of his _just_ parted lips into Peter’s mouth, little bursts of electricity crackling through his veins that had felt dead for so long. He didn’t even really know what he was doing but it felt so good he never wanted to stop.

 

 “Does this feel real?” Peter breathed against his lips, his nose just nudging Stiles’s to tilt his head just so. The hand not cupping Stiles’s neck slid down his spine, the heat of his palm radiating through Stiles’s too-thin t-shirt and pressing against the small of his back. “You feel real to me.” A soft, almost peck brushed against Stiles’s lips and Peter shifted as if to step back from him.

 

 Stiles surged forward, mashing their lips together, seizing the collar of his jacket so he couldn’t move away, couldn’t make an excuse that it was a mistake or that Stiles was just eighteen or any of the other dozen protests he could make. Not when Stiles felt lit up from the inside like the fourth of July.

 

 A low, rumbling growl vibrated against his mouth at his brazenness, answering his hunger and Peter’s hands caught his head, between them, so powerful yet so passionate, so gentle. For him.

 

_“…to the people I like I can be very, very nice…”_

 

 Oh God.

 

 Stiles felt the backs of his calves hit the end of his bed and he went down. Sprawled across the lower half of the bed with his legs splayed, he stared with dazed eyes up at Peter standing between them. He swore he saw a flash of beta blue in the minute light streaming in from the streetlight outside, but he blinked and it was gone.

 

 Peter stared down at him with such a fervent gaze that Stiles felt as if he were boiling on the inside.

 

 “I think the right thing to do would be to walk away, when you’re young and confused by the fear of what tomorrow might bring,” Peter said with a voice husky and rough with passion.

 

 “I’ve seen more things than men twice my age. I’m not a kid.” Stiles pushed up on his elbows. The action exposed the ugly mar of the wound, the source of all their problems as if he were asking if Peter were afraid. It was also an echo of the last time he had sat half naked in front of Peter, what felt like forever ago now.

 

 “For the record, this _is_ a seduction,” he murmured, just in case Peter didn’t realise Stiles meant it in perfect contrast to that night. Back then, Peter had saved him, Stiles had been afraid and now? Now Stiles was still afraid but he didn’t want Peter to save him. He just wanted him.

 

 Peter stepped forward, one knee resting on the bed outside of Stiles’s, the other firmly between them as he hovered over him. His eyes roved Stiles’s determined expression, then down to the wound dominating his torso. For all his beauty and neatness, Stiles didn’t believe Peter to be shallow, not when he had himself experienced scars that had taken years to heal. But for a fleeting moment, Stiles thought that he was put off by the obvious blemish to Stiles’s skin, instead his fingers traced the outside of the wound, reverent, as if it were a mark of strength.

 

 “This makes me incredibly selfish, but I don’t care. I am selfish and I want you.” His fingers skirted Stiles’s ribs, his side, making him squirm, before he caressed the hollow of his hipbone that Stiles had never realised was so sensitive before.

 

 “Good,” he gasped out, “I’m selfish too. _Have_ me.”

 

 Peter’s body dipped, and if he did find the wound unsightly, he didn’t show it, pressing himself to Stiles, nuzzle-mouthing at the corner of his jaw, the underside, just over his frantically racing pulse. Like a starving beast devouring the sweetest nectar. “You’re so hungry to feel something,” Peter whispered against his skin.

 

 Stiles knew Peter meant it as a question, meant to ask if that was the only reason he wanted this, but the feel of his voice against his flesh still made him shiver with pleasure.

 

 “Do you know another reason people fuck? Wanting to feel is probably one of the better ones,” Stiles managed, clawing at Peter’s jacket, shoving it carelessly from his shoulders.

 

 “Is that what we’re going to be doing? Fucking?” Peter lifted just enough to shrug off his jacket, reach between them to undo the buttons of his shirt.

 

 Stiles watched his deft fingers work his shirt open, watched him cast it effortlessly from his shoulders, sending it shuddering to the ground. “Right now we’re talking.”

 

 Peter’s body slid down to press against his, all taut, honed muscle and glorious unmarked skin. He ran the pad of his thumb across Stiles’s lower lip that was mostly healed, if a bit sore. The contact drained the lingering sting away as Peter spoke. “I do love that smart mouth.” He leaned in to replace his thumb with his own lips. He kissed the corner, his lips melding to Stiles’s with gentle but insistent caresses. “Open it for me,” he breathed, punctuating the request with a swipe of his tongue.

 

 Stiles groaned. He’d kissed a few girls before but never like this and never someone he wanted this much. Never someone who _got_ him. His lips parted and Peter’s tongue swept in, just enough to tease, to taste, to coax his own tongue into tentative answering touches between their mouths as they stroked together.

 

 Their embrace was soft yet desperate. Stiles wrapped his arms around Peter’s shoulders, fingers digging into his hair, into the back of his neck, holding him with careless, desperate hunger. Peter pressed up into him, knee pressing tight to Stiles’s groin through his sweatpants. Stiles groaned into their kiss, hips jerking up against Peter unbidden, the burden of the wound falling away under Peter’s warm weight.

 

 Peter braced himself with one arm beside his head, enough to keep most of his weight off Stiles’s torso. He allowed their hips to connect though, allowed his fingers to brush against Stiles’s face.

 

 “You gonna be nice to me?” Stiles whispered teasingly into their kiss. He felt feverish already; sweat dappling his brow as he arched up into Peter’s thigh, his groin. He felt Peter’s cock hard and heavy, trapped in finely tailored black trousers, grinding into his belly with every move he made.

 

 “So nice,” Peter panted against his lips, punctuating his words with a final brush of his mouth before mouthing more voraciously at Stiles’s neck.

 

 There was a coppery tang on Stiles’s tongue, a signal that their kisses had worried his sore lip, even if he couldn’t feel the pain, but a pass of his tongue told him it hadn’t split again. Regardless, it was probably why Peter feasted on his neck instead, a place he’d never really felt sensitive before but now was driving him crazy. Peter’s breath fogged up his tingling flesh with its heat.

 

 Stiles rolled his head to the side, crying out, shifting his hips erratically until his cock rutted hard against Peter’s. The movement punched a shocked groan of pleasure from Peter’s mouth against his throat and Stiles locked his legs around him, grinding up into him in wanton abandon.

 

 Peter let out a sharp groan into the hollow of his throat, fucking him back hard and fast, undulating with him in perfect rhythm until Stiles stopped thinking, stopped _everything_ and just moved with him, breath harsh and loud in the quiet room. He felt primed, vibrating and tight, his muscles in his lower back cramping but he didn’t stop.

 

 A raw, animalistic sound carried through every place they were connected, originating from something in Peter’s throat. He reached between them without really stopping, urging his erection out from the confines of his trousers. He tugged Stiles’s sweatpants down enough to bring their cocks together, hard and damp and so hot it felt like they were branding each other.

 

 Peter covered him utterly now, touching him everywhere, grinding into him, their movements squeezing their cocks between their bellies.

 

 “Not hurting you?” Peter panted as they moved together and Stiles shook his head into Peter’s neck this time, not enough air in his lungs to reassure him. The wound seemed immune to touch, to manipulation or contact now the pain had vanished, as if it were no longer physical but something entirely otherworldly. It didn’t bother him now. It didn’t bother him that he couldn’t feel anything as it slowly swallowed him up, because he could feel Peter _everywhere_. He was on fire wherever they touched, dizzy with it, and he clenched his eyes shut as his hips started to spasm of their own accord against the brutal, undulating gyrations of Peter’s hips.

 

 The sticky catch of their cocks on the skin between their bellies made the friction just sweet enough that Stiles’s stomach clenched. Peter twisted his head a little, catching Stiles’s inner-wrist with his blunt teeth and hot tongue.

 

 Stiles burst. He made a shocked, almost hurt sound as he came, spilling between their still moving bodies.

 

 Peter groaned deep in his throat, rearing back to swipe his hand through Stiles’s come and fist himself hard and fast. He looked glorious, every muscle and tendon flushed and tight, glistening with their sweat and spendings as he looked down at Stiles through lust-blown eyes.

 

 Chest heaving, Stiles watched him as Peter’s free hand skirted along the edge of the wound, as if checking for damage even though he must’ve realised its imperviousness, before grasping Stiles’s throbbing cock.

 

 Every nerve ending in his body was singing in the aftermath of his orgasm, his cock sensitive and hot and tingling in a way that was almost painful. _Almost._ Just there, teetering on the edge, where he tried to take himself but couldn’t ever quite. It was like trying to tickle yourself – impossible. This didn’t tickle. It burned just this side of good and Stiles squirmed as Peter caressed him feather-light, letting his cock go at the end of each stroke so it flicked wetly at his stomach, all while he stripped his own erection.

 

 Then just as Stiles reached for his wrist to still his hand, Peter caught the head between the ring of his thumb and finger, just holding there as he squeezed his own hardness and his own come splashed across Stiles’s swollen, abused cock.

 

 “You are a cruel bastard,” Stiles gasped when Peter released him, reaching for Stiles’s fallen t-shirt to wipe their hands and stomachs clean. Peter gave a little laugh, dragging Stiles’s sweatpants up before straightening up.

 

 “You just looked too good, so wrecked for me, it got me so hot I had to play with you a little.” He reached for his shirt and Stiles felt his stomach flip in a way that cut through his post-orgasmic haze like a knife. He pushed up on his elbows once more, staring up at Peter’s mussed hair and flushed skin.

 

 “Is that what you’re doing?” he asked quietly. “Playing with me?”

 

 Peter halted mid-motion, as if realising how his words could be interpreted and that soft expression returned. “You know I’m not.” He held Stiles’s gaze a moment longer and then Stiles watched him fold his shirt. He realised then that _that_ was what he’d stepped back to do, to fold his shirt and remove his perfectly tailored trousers, his shoes and socks and set them on the chair in the corner of the room. He was just the neat-freak Stiles had always guessed he was, had even teased him about being recently, not a man that was about to duck out on him now that he’d gotten off.

 

 When he returned to the bed, Stiles shimmied back up it, but instead of resting alongside him, Peter knelt between his legs, wearing only his boxers. His fingers sprawled across Stiles’s belly, then up and around the edges of the mottled stretch of skin across his torso. It looked the same as ever, untouched by their lovemaking, and he knew its twin on his back wound be too. It was if the Nemeton’s energy had created some invisible shield around it as it grew and grew. To protect its spill of power, perhaps, since Stiles’s body was rapidly becoming an extension of it rather than himself.

 

 Peter wore a distant, unreadable expression, fingertips tracing up and over until they rested above Stiles’s surprisingly steady, relaxed heartbeat. The rush of hormones and emotions had left him replete and sated, calm in spite of everything. Even his busy mind struggled to grasp at every passing worry like usual. He lay back fully and this time Peter followed him, without moving his hand.

 

 “I remember being trapped in the dark,” Peter said as he pressed his nose into Stiles’s ear and just breathed him in. “I won’t let that happen to you again.”

 

 Stiles had never heard him speak with such conviction, untainted by wicked humour, sarcasm or fearsome charm. They’d talked about many things in the last month or so, but Stiles had never been so sure Peter was completely open with him until now. Like he could ask anything, even the most forbidden questions, and Peter would answer.

 

 But not tonight.

 

 Turning into the heat Peter radiated, Stiles pulled the blankets up over them and felt himself go boneless. “If my dad comes home and finds you in my bed he’ll load up on the wolfsbane, legal age of consent or not,” he warned half-heartedly.

 

 Peter hummed in acknowledgement. “I’ll listen out for him.”

 

 Stiles fidgeted a little, relaxed but also stunned by the novelty of sharing his bed. With Peter Hale of all people, who until little more than a month ago had been so untouchable, from another world. That was until he’d realised just how similar they were.

 

 “I have nightmares,” Stiles murmured, even as he felt exhaustion nipping at the edges of his consciousness. “They sort of make me a restless sleeper, if I sleep at all.”

 

 “Me too.”

 

 With eyes still closed, Stiles let his hand rest between him and Peter, curled slightly against his bare chest. He licked his lips, swearing he could still taste Peter on them, feel the echo of his mouth against them. It set a low, soothing buzz through his skin. “I talk too.”

 

 “Me too.”

 

 Stiles curled his cold toes under Peter’s warm feet, just to be annoying, just to see where the limits were. Peter just stretched like a lazy, sated housecat and curled one leg around Stiles’s calves. He seemed to relish the contact that Stiles thought he hadn’t dared to relax into in a long, long time.

 

 It was so domestic and warm and safe, like a quiet desert oasis surrounded by a dust storm.

 

 “I drool.”

 

 He felt a slow smile spread against his jawline where Peter’s mouth rested. “Me too.”

 

*

 

 A heavy fog swept in with dusk the following night. It swallowed everything in an ominous mist that only exacerbated Stiles’s sense of foreboding. He swallowed uneasily as he stood in his bedroom, staring out at the expanse of grey below. It made the world feel like an infinite expanse of nothingness, reminded him of the void and the place his nightmares took him. It was definitely supernatural and couldn’t be anything good.

 

 “It certainly changes things.”

 

 Lydia’s voice startled him from his thoughts of impending doom and he turned to face her as she stepped into his room, smiling a little awkwardly as she came to stand at his side.

 

 “Your dad called Deaton, it still has to be tonight,” she continued.

 

 Stiles nodded distantly. “Guess the plan can’t wait for the weather, huh?”

 

 Lydia’s brow furrowed, her perfectly painted lips catching between her teeth as she seemed to struggle to find the right words. In the end, she reached for his hand and held it between both of hers tightly. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised earnestly. “You’re going to be okay.”

 

 With his eyes stinging, Stiles inhaled shakily and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. She wore the same subtle, comforting floral scent. He wondered at what point she had become one of his best friends rather than a love-interest on a pedestal.

 

 “Your dad and Parrish called the others. Scott, Kira, Derek and Peter will bring Deaton here and we’ll find our way together rather than meeting there. Wherever this fog has come from, it doesn’t matter, Stiles, we’re going to finish this.”

 

 Stiles nodded into her hair and struggled for composure, just tried to breathe. They stood there for a long time but in the end, by the time he heard the doorbell ring below, heard the sound of voices joining his dad and Parrish, he’d reached some kind of self-control. He gently released Lydia and made for the door, but Lydia’s grip on his arm stopped him. Instead of waiting for him to turn, she side-stepped him and ducked her head a little to make sure his eyes met hers.

 

 “You know Allison wouldn’t blame you,” she whispered softly, her perfectly manicured fingers digging into his arm a little too hard. They were glossy and pristine, like every inch of her, her way of maintaining control, of coping with the chaos raging on the inside. “I don’t blame you, Scott doesn’t blame you, even Isaac and Chris Argent didn’t blame you.”

 

 Stiles felt his eyes give a treacherous sting and he blinked hard against it.

 

 “The only one that blames you is you, Stiles. Whatever happens down there tonight, you have to know that.”

 

 He’d never outright claimed responsibility for Allison’s death but it had always been there, at the back of his mind, a heavy, unspoken burden with no name. It had been smothered by his constant insistences that he was fine like everything else, yet had continued to eat away at him. But Lydia had seen it, Peter had seen it, maybe everyone had.

 

 He’d buried it, he’d been so afraid that if someone had seen his self-effacing thoughts, they’d become true. Maybe _that_ was what had segregated him from the people he loved all this time? Because Allison had been one of his best friends too, maybe not as close as Isaac or Lydia or Scott, definitely not as much as Mr Argent but he’d cared about her. He’d fought beside her and she was _gone_ like so many others and he’d carried those deaths, all that blood with him all this time. Alone.

 

 He must’ve said some of that aloud, or perhaps Lydia just saw it on his face because she grasped him by both shoulders now and shook him. “None of it was your fault, Stiles,” she said fiercely, “and you don’t have to talk to me about it, but you have to talk to _someone_. Your dad, or even Peter Hale, I know you’ve got some… _connection_ or something and that’s fine but you’ve been hiding that too, haven’t you? And if you’re doing it so none of us worry then its having the exact opposite effect because we care about you, Stiles, we all do.” She was shaking as she stared up at him, tears in her eyes. “You need to remember that when you face whatever you do tonight, that we love you and that it wasn’t your fault.”

 

 Stiles sucked in a ragged breath, setting his jaw against the swell of emotion in his throat.

 

 A soft knock on his bedroom door, which Lydia had left ajar, made them both look up and Peter stepped into the room. Lydia gave Stiles a watery smile, stroking the place on his arms where her nails had dug in as she moved away. “We’ll be waiting for you, okay?”

 

 Stiles nodded, wanting to thank her but his throat felt swollen up, too thick with all the feelings he’d tried to push away to form words. He thought she got it anyway, because she gave him a last, knowing look before departing the room. It wasn’t until her footsteps retreated down the hall that Peter took another step into the room and Stiles moved to meet him, just kept moving until his slightly inclined forehead pressed against Peter’s. He closed his eyes and just breathed.

 

 “I didn’t want to interrupt,” Peter said, cupping the back of his neck as if he were something precious. “But I sensed your heartbeat.”

 

 Stiles nodded again, feeling like that was all he was capable of. He felt clammy from panic but Peter’s smell and voice were like a balm to his senses. He felt embraced by him, kept safe from the world just at a single touch.

 

 “You never told me it wasn’t my fault,” Stiles whispered, voice almost lost beneath the sound of the rapid beat of his heart.

 

 Peter’s free hand came up to cover the small of his back and Stiles had never realised how soothing a touch there could be.

 

 “You weren’t ready to hear it from me, to talk about any of it, not that side of at any rate.”

 

 Stiles licked his lips. “How do you know that?”

 

 There was a long moment before Peter gave him an answer. “Because I saw myself in your eyes,” he murmured, voice a little hoarse now. “A survivor in need of solace.”

 

 Slowly, Stiles lifted his head to meet Peter’s eyes, eyes bright but so very human at that moment. Open to him in a way he thought they hadn’t been to many others.

 

 They were two strangers cast in the same mould. Or they had been at least. Now he thought they might be more.

 

 “None of it was your fault.” Peter brushed a kiss against his hairline to punctuate his words, while Stiles hooked his fingers in Peter’s sweater and just _felt_ it all.

 

*

 

 Stiles didn’t know how werewolves senses worked, maybe if he got out of this, he’d make it a project to test their limits, but somehow Derek and Peter gotten two cars to _Beacon Hills Preserve_ and guided them through the trees. By torchlight they moved slowly, especially with the mist consuming everything that wasn’t within a couple of hundred feet. The deeper they moved, the bigger the sense of _wrongness_ grew in Stiles’s gut.

 

 An ache built in his chest, something like heartburn, the pressure of indigestion pushing from beneath his ribcage right through to the corner of his shoulder blade. He rubbed at it absently as the pressure grew, not even realising what he was doing until Peter caught his elbow, jerking him to a stop.

 

 “Stiles.” There was a note of worry in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

 On the other side of Stiles, his dad closed in, face lined with concern and Stiles looked down to where his hand rested over his chest – right where the wound was now _throbbing._ He drew his hand back, watching it shake as he lowered it to his side. His lips moved soundlessly, but no words came out.

 

 “It’s the Nemeton,” Deaton said from just a few feet ahead. “We’re close.”

 

 The ache grew with every step they took, until it felt like a sharp, piercing pain straight through him, like being skewered with the katana, the same way The Nogitsune had been. It brought him to his knees in the end and his body was flooded with pain, with encroaching panic and cries of his name flew from the lips of everyone around him.

 

 Was it possible to be so terrified yet realise he wasn’t alone all at once?

 

 His dad hooked his arm over his neck and hauled him up, but at the same time, he felt Peter take the other. He hung between them for a moment, wincing, biting back the swelling agony building in his chest, his _back_ , like he was about to burst open in both directions. He _just_ made out his dad’s face, Peter’s not far from it, a silent exchange and then his dad reluctantly released him, leaving Peter to sweep him up against his chest.

 

 When they stepped into the clearing, the mist seemed to thin a little, enough that Stiles could clearly make out the shape of the Nemeton as they approached. His vision shifted, seemed to _pulse_ in time with the pain lancing him and for one, horrifying moment, he thought the wound in his torso would explode before they could even perform the ritual.

 

 Everything started to blur. He heard voices, caught snippets of conversation. Peter lay him down across the Nemeton and everything vibrated around him, even the very air he breathed. He reached out almost blindly, flailing as if he were falling.

 

 “I’m here, kid,” his dad said, voice ragged, gripping one of his hands firmly, anchoring him in place as the tide of overwhelming energy rushed through him. A soft hand, so gentle it could only be Lydia’s touched his brow and Stiles struggled to take it all in, to see what was going on.

 

 He was losing minutes at a time between waves of agony but he just about made out the shape of his dad and Lydia holding onto him, Scott holding a heavy, metal bowl that Deaton was dropping things into, his hands constantly moving. Vaguely Stiles registered every other sentence to leave Deaton’s lips in an almost hypnotic drawl. Instructions to Scott or part of some druid magic? Stiles wasn’t sure. All he knew was Deaton’s quiet voice filled the clearing, so calm and eerie that Stiles feared he was slipping into one of his nightmares.

 

 “Bind it with boneset, to keep foreign spirits from the body… crushed black tourmaline…”

A sharp wind rushed through the clearing, sending the grey mist curling back like a living creature of the night recoiling from a sudden light.

 

 “Did you do that?” Kira’s voice asked from what seemed like far away.

 

 “It wasn’t us,” Deaton said and this time there was an edge of worry in his tone. “We have to hurry.”

 

 Stiles’s consciousness veered sideways again, coming back into focus just as Derek, Deaton and Kira held black candles aloft over the bowl Scott held. The wax drizzled like dark blood into it, spitting as it hit the concoction. Smoke rose up into the night in dark, glittering furls. Stiles squinted, watched them curve into elongated, smoky tendrils, like the clawed fingertips that reached out of him in his dreams.

 

 “ _Stiles_!”

 

 He blinked, hard, his usual method to escape a nightmare he was locked in, but no matter how he tried all he could hear was a rushing, high-pitched sound like a howling storm. All he could see was the smoky fingers rising from the bowl that Scott now held aloft over him. Deaton tossed a handful of ash inside, making sparks explode from the metal and rise into the heavens.

 

 Stiles’s body arched as if he were electrocuted and on fire all at once. His scream tore at his throat, almost drowning out Deaton’s insistences that they _“hold him, hold him!”_ But even as they tried, Stiles surged sideways and threw the contents of his stomach up across the edge of the Nemeton, narrowly missing Peter’s shoes where he stood over him.

 

 He flopped back on his back, shaking like he was freezing even though he was sweating with the heat of the Nemeton’s power consuming him. Through erratic snatches of vision, through the blinding pain, Stiles saw Peter standing over him, Lydia and his dad, like a guardian sculpture over a grave. Stiles tried to make his throat work, tried to say his name, say anything but then several things happened in the space of seconds.

 

 The remnants of the tree below him _shook_ as if caught in an earthquake. Stiles felt the agonising, suffocating pressure in his torso spike, and he jerked, a choked, wordless gurgle in his throat. It felt like the Nemeton had sent a lance of sharp, cutting power straight up, skewering him straight through so that Stiles stared at his chest, expecting to see a blade jutting from it. He was frozen, half-arched up off the Nemeton, trapped in his agony as if years were passing him by, not split-seconds.

 

 Peter dropped down by his head, between his dad and Lydia, tearing open his t-shirt and hoody and placing his palms flat on his shoulders, keeping his upper-body flat to the tree-stump. Stiles stared. The wound was black now, spidery tendrils stretching from the dark, cavernous space across his entire body as far as his torn clothing allowed the eye to see. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to die from lack of oxygen before they ever finished.

 

 “It’s trying to take me with it!” Stiles cried out through the choking pressure in his chest, his back, his _head_.

 

 “It’ll go dormant once we close the door, slake its thirst with a fitting sacrifice,” Deaton said, almost urgently.

 

 “Breathe, Stiles,” Peter said, so calm, firm, as if Stiles had no room to refuse.

 

 Kira set the triskelion urn right over the blackened, dead wound in his chest. Deaton took hold of the other side of the bowl Scott still held aloft and together they tipped the burnished copper until the contents spilled in thick, dark rivulets across the urn carved from the very bark against Stiles’s back. It should’ve been hot but it felt icy cold, _stinging_ where it oozed down the edges of the urn and across his chest, seeping into the Nemeton below him.

 

 “Is it working?” his dad cried out as Stiles’s head tipped back, limp as his body twitched like in aftermath from a lightning strike, mouth open, eyes vacant.

 

 “Is it _working_?!” his dad demanded again, even as Stiles stared up into the indistinct shape of Peter’s face.

 

  _Don’t let it take me, don’t let it put me back there_ , he tried to say.

 

 Then, Peter, his dad, _everyone_ jerked their heads sideways and Stiles, whose head was already tilted limply half-way toward that direction, glimpsed the source of their horror.

 

 Five dark, cloaked figured stepped into the clearing, out from the mist that clung to the edges as if held back by an invisible wall.

 

 Lydia’s scream pierced the night and Stiles’s world went black.

 

*

_“What gets bigger, the more you take away?”_

_Stiles felt a sob build in his throat._ No, no, no... _His eyes were already shut but his skin prickled ominously, a warning to what would be there if he dared to open them. He curled in on himself, shivering even though he wasn’t cold._

_“What gets bigger, the more you take away, Stiles?”_

_“You’re gone,” Stiles whispered and then when he felt movement all around him, heard shifting, creeping limbs he snapped, “You’re gone!”_

_Shrieking, hissing, growling laughter filled the echoing space and Stiles snapped his eyes open on instinct. The space he was in, it was small, cold, dark and when he reached out his fingertips brushed harsh, rough brick. He swallowed, staring through the tiny gap where one brick had been removed, enough for him to see through into the dark expanse of the basement, lit only by distant circles of light far above through the grating._

_Stiles was in the place where the Nogitsune’s body had once lain._

_Long, stretched, unnatural shapes moved across the space, twisted limbs, the stuff of even the darkest of nightmares, prowling the area. The diminutive streaks of light from above caught their mottled skin, their fur, their claws, their glowing eyes and drawn, gaunt faces, each different from the other but each equally haunting. Then a familiar shadow crossed in front of the hole and Stiles shrank back against the concrete wall behind him._

_“What gets bigger, the more you take away?” the Nogitsune asked, not echoing now but frighteningly real and full-bodied. It carried the familiar slur but was as crisp and clear as the fear rippling down Stiles’s spine._

_Stiles set his jaw. “This isn’t your game anymore,” he managed, albeit shakily. “I’m not playing your game. You’re trapped, you’re–”_

_“But so are you, Stiles,” the Nogitsune moaned almost tauntingly, “we are all trapped. The Nemeton has us all.”_

_Somehow, although it shouldn’t have been possible, the Nogitsune reached in, hand slithering through to too-small hole and pressing hard at Stiles’s chest._

_Stiles looked down, finding himself naked in his narrow space between the wall and staring at the black wound in his chest, where the Nogitsune’s claws were digging in. It didn’t hurt, but the shock of it, the sight of it was enough to steal his breath and a choked sob caught in his throat as he watched, helpless._

_“It has you here, Stiles and it will consume you, as it has consumed us. Such is its power.”_

_It was dark, so dark and cold and cold sweat dripped down Stiles’s nape as the Nogitsune’s fingers dug deeper, disappearing into the void opening up inside him._

_“What gets bigger, the more you take away?” the Nogitsune asked again with a victorious note to his voice, growing stronger from Stiles’s suffering, his fear, his pain. This time, every creature lurking in the dark realm beyond whispered it too, over and over, their voices staggered and overwhelming, growing and growing in noise until Stiles was drowning in them._

_Tears streaked down his cheeks and the Nogitsune gave a low, grumbling laugh that was barely audible above the din. The more the fear built, the more and more the Nogitsune’s digging fingers began to hurt. It was like the more Stiles lost himself, the more real it became._

_He thought of his dad and Lydia holding onto him in the real world, thought Peter’s face above him, anchoring him to reality even in the most overwhelming nightmare._

_He thought of the numbness that had consumed him since the sacrifice had opened the door, since the Nogitsune had torn a hole right through it, taken everything away until there was so little of him left. He thought of Peter’s hands and his touch, reverent but not careful, not afraid he would break. He thought of Peter saying “I saw myself in your eyes” and “not your fault” and “me too.”_

_Slowly, Stiles lifted his head from where he had curled in on himself, opened his eyes where he’d clenched them tight. Though he couldn’t see the Nogitsune’s face, he felt the tension in him, the uncertainty at last._

_“You like riddles?” Stiles asked, sounding braver than he felt. He licked his lips nervously and even though he was lost and afraid and alone, he reached up with shaking hands and grasped the Nogitsune’s bandaged wrist. He flinched from Stiles’s touch, as if burned. He drew back, leaving the narrow space between the wall and retreating back into the void beyond where the other dark creatures had gone ominously silent._

_Drawing himself up, Stiles reached for the missing brick and pulled, tugging away the next brick, then the next._

_“You dream you’re trapped in a room. The room has no windows and only one way out, a hole in the wall. Outside the room, monsters are waiting for you and you’re surrounded by a sea you cannot cross. You’re naked with no supplies and you can hear people calling you, but they can’t reach you. They can call out to you, they can support you, but only you can get yourself out. How do you get out alive?”_

_Stiles scrambled up on his bare knees, tearing frantically at the brickwork now. He felt hands against his, against his shoulders, heard voices calling his name and he had to get out. Now. Then suddenly, the hole was big enough for him. The bricks scattered across the floor of the basement and the creatures beyond, Nogitsune included, shrank back._

_Stiles’s chest was heaving, his face sweaty, breathless but_ alive _. And when he looked down, the black chasm in his chest was gone._

_“You stop dreaming.”_

*

 

 A slow, rhythmic beeping and a familiar sterile smell was what Stiles recognised first, then yellowish light against the backs of his eyelids. He squinted, blinked awake and saw an IV hanging at his bedside, his _hospital_ bedside. His dad was hunched forward, elbows on his bed and half-out of the chair he was sitting in. He dove for Stiles’s hand when their eyes met, stopping _just_ short of grabbing it when he encountered the IV. Instead he settled for resting his fingers over Stiles’s, his eyes glassy as he studied his face.

 

 “I thought we had a deal you wouldn’t scare me like that again.”

 

 Stiles managed a tired smile. “I would never agree to such outlandish terms.”

 

 His dad smiled before reaching up to smooth Stiles’s hair off his sweaty forehead. “You’re even talking like Peter Hale now, should I be worried?”

 

 Stiles felt his stomach jolt, even as bone-tired as he was but as his lips parted to form an answer, he saw the line connected to his other arm and stopped dead. “Why am I getting blood?”

 

 His dad winced. “I had to… God, kid, you were so out of it, you really don’t remember?”

 

 Slowly, Stiles told his dad about the nightmares he’d been having, the ones that’d gotten steadily worse the bigger the wounds got. His dad helped him sip at a plastic cup of water, which, in the current situation, was the best thing Stiles had ever tasted on his parched tongue. By the end of it, his dad was staring at him with silent horror as Stiles told him about where he’d found himself when he’d blacked out.

 

 “You think it was real?”

 

 Stiles hesitated. “I think it was in my head, if that’s what you’re asking but…well, so was the Nogitsune to start. I think….I think it was both. I think like Peter said, I opened myself up to the Nemeton and when the Nogitsune was torn out, the Nemeton flowed into the gap and just kept… _pushing._ I think that messed with my balance as well as the balance of _Beacon Hills_.”

 

 Why else did Deaton step in and help? Aside from perhaps death threats from Peter.

 

 “But I think some of what I had going on, from after the Nogitsune, you know… _mentally_ , emotionally, it allowed it to manifest the way it did.” He turned to the side, staring at the nearly empty bag of blood, feeling queasy and exhausted but otherwise whole. He reached for his chest carefully, not wanting to jerk the IV and touched the place where the itchy hospital gown covered the wound’s location. His dad’s hand grasped his carefully once more.

 

 “It’s gone, Stiles.”

 

 “I…completely?” he asked, not daring to believe it was really over.

 

 His dad gave him a watery smile. “You scared me, kid, all of us. You had some sort of fit, blood came pouring out of your mouth, your nose, your _eyes_ and then you were so still, and those _things_ came…”

 

 Suddenly it all came rushing back, being held down to stop him from arching off the Nemeton, the urn on his chest over the wound, the retreating mist and the dark shadows stepping out of it.

 

 “Is everyone alright?” he asked quickly, trying to sit up a little more in the bed.

 

 After reaching for the buttons to adjust the bed, his dad sat back a little more comfortably in the hospital chair beside him. More to look at him fully than to try and find comfort himself, Stiles thought.

 

 “Deaton said they were warlocks, hoping to take advantage of the ‘power leak’ or whatever,” his dad winced apologetically. “But as soon as the Nemeton was shut down, they just up and left, they had no reason to even try to fight.”

 

 “Just like that?”

 “No, not just like that,” his dad admonished quietly, levelling him with a look. “It was… _insane._ The trees, the fog, the ground, it all bent to their will. Roots sprang up out of the ground and tried to drag you with it like some sort of _Stephen King_ movie.”

 

 “So?” Stiles prompted. “No one got hurt?”

 

 “It was all show mostly. They weren’t expecting a pack of wolves and…well whatever Kira is. As soon as they realised they weren’t dealing with humans they seemed to want to just get what they came for and get out, until they realised that wasn’t happening anyway. Derek took the brunt of the first wave, but he was healed up before we even got back into town. When those roots came up out of the ground and tried to get hold of you though, they took a slice out of me,” his dad rolled his sleeve up to show a nasty gash with stitches along the inside of his forearm. “Gave Lydia a black eye.”

 

 “She’s gonna give me hell for that when I see her.”

 

 His dad laughed. “She was like a hellcat or something. Kira too. You’re really lucky to have them all at your back.”

 

 Stiles nodded, closing his eyes for a moment against the glare of the hospital lighting. His head was sore, like the kind of headache you got after sleeping too long. He could feel the fuzziness of the drugs as well as tiredness, but he felt at ease in spite of all that, lighter, as if the burden had truly been lifted.

 

 “Peter Hale fought pretty hard for you too,” his dad said in a tone that was deliberately light. “One of the roots nearly tore his arm off when he grabbed hold of it to keep it off you.”

 

 Stiles’s eyes flew open to see his dad’s raised questioning brow. “Tore it _off_?”

 

 “He assured everyone it’d heal fine. Stopped bleeding by the time he dropped us off at the hospital but he was a mess, had to leave before the nurses insisted they get a look at him and realised he was already healing.”

 

 Stiles chewed the inside of his mouth as his mind reeled. “Well, if I’ve gained anything from all of this, it’s the assurance that a lot of people care about me.” The diversionary tactic didn’t work, however, his dad’s expression remained unreadable and unchanged. “Dad,” Stiles began, but he was cut off.

 

 “I just want to understand,” his dad said slowly, “Peter Hale is a lot older–”

 

 Stiles’s lips parted to interrupt but his dad pressed on.

 

 “–but I get that with everything you’ve dealt with since…since your mom died, you’re older than your years too. You’ve…spent a lot of time together recently and you’ve seemed…well _happier_ , even when all this has been going on.” He gestured to Stiles’s chest, then stared at him for a moment before dragging a hand over his face, tired and unshaven and bleary-eyed. “He’s a dangerous guy, Stiles.”

 

 Stiles lifted his chin a little in defiance of that, even though he didn’t exactly disagree. “Not to me he’s not, not to the people who matter to me.” Then, at the sight of his dad’s worried expression he added, “I’ve seen what he’s capable of, Dad, I’m not going into this blind. He may not be the girl next door but he’s…he’s _good_ , dad.”

 

 With a sigh, his dad said. “It’s not about being a girl or a guy, Stiles, you know that doesn’t matter. What _matters_ is you dating this _man_ that could rip your throat out with his fingertips if he wanted to. “

 

 “Would you have the same protests if it were Scott or Derek I had feelings for?” Stiles challenged and his dad set his jaw in exactly the same way he did when he was frustrated.

 

 “I just… I don’t trust him, Stiles, even though you do and you deserve–”

 

 “Someone who you’ve seen do whatever it takes to keep me safe and happy?” Stiles finished, watching his dad’s expression sour a little.

 

 “I don’t trust him,” he said again, more firmly this time.

 

 Stiles let his head fall back on the pillow. He knew this wasn’t an argument that was going to be won in a day, but he was tired and he just wanted the possibility of a resolution. He wanted his dad to understand.

 

 “Do you trust my judgement?”

 

 His dad flinched, evidently surprised by the question and his lips parted immediately, but the answer was delayed in reaching them. “Yes.”

 

 “Then trust that he’s worth a chance, at least? And if he blows it, you can tell me I told you so.”

 

 “If he blows it I’ll put a bullet between his pretty blue eyes, wolfsbane and all. And I’m not above recruiting your badass friends against him either.”

 

 Stiles sighed, but at least it sounded like the conversation was closed for now. “It won’t come to that. He’ll charm you in no time.”

 

 “Oh, he’s been trying,” his dad said, “he’s been here four times already with good coffee and the kinda take-out I didn’t even know they _had_ as take out. He brought you that too.” A little tilt of his chin toward the far corner drew Stiles’s eyes in that direction, where a ridiculously large basket of flowers, chocolates and a teddy bear all sat, with a balloon tied to the handle emblazoned with _‘Get Well Soon’_.

 

 Stiles felt his cheeks colour but it was a good embarrassment, a warm twinge in his belly. He’d never really had someone make such a fuss of him before that wasn’t his parents and it felt weird. To be noticed, to be wanted, to be liked that much.

 

 Then his dad’s words registered fully.

 

 “How long have I been here even?” Stiles asked with a frown. If Peter had been here four times he had to have been here some time.

 

 “Two days–” His dad began, just as Stiles filled with dread.

 

 “Oh my god, he saw me puke. I nearly puked _on him_ ,” he lamented.

 

 His dad’s lips twisted in a barely concealed smile, probably thinking if Stiles was worrying about that then he would be alright.

 

 He clearly didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

 

 “Scott isn’t crazy about this either, by the way. I think he’ll take a lot of _charming_ too. And I don’t think gourmet steak dinners _Alicante_ is going to cut it.”

 

 Stiles waved a hand dismissively. “Scott is my brother, not my alpha. He won’t get it but he’ll want me to be happy.”

 

 “Well I’m your dad and I want you to be happy too.” He reached to stroke Stiles’s hair again, probably worried about touching his hands anymore lest he disturb the needles buried in his skin. After a moment though, he tugged Stiles’s hair playfully, just enough to rock his head a little. “But you make sure he knows your old man can be pretty dangerous too, even without supernatural powers.”

 

 Stiles laughed softly, gently swatting in the direction of his dad’s hand. “He knows dad, I think the whole town does. Maybe that’s where I get my reckless streak from.”

 

 His dad sighed, dragging his fingers through his own hair. “We’re going to talk about this a lot more once you’re outta here, son. _A lot_. And there are going to be ground rules – a _lot_ of them. You may be eighteen but you’re still in school–”

 

 “And I still live under your roof?” Stiles interjected lightly, smiling even as he closed his eyes and let his head rest on the pillows once more.

 

 “You bet your ass you do.” His dad settled his hand on his upper arm, gently stroking as his mind drifted.

 

 Just as he sank into unconsciousness, he swore he heard the door open, heard Peter’s voice ask softly, “is he awake?”

 

 “You just missed him,” his dad murmured in reply as exhaustion and the drugs took their toll.

 

 *

 

 Apparently Peter visited once more while Stiles was out, but when Stiles woke he was met with the faces of Scott and Lydia. His dad had reluctantly left his side to clean up and sort out the house ready for his release tomorrow – on strict bed rest rules. In the end he didn’t get a chance to receive a hospital visit from Peter while he was awake, but there was another basket of flowers on one of the end tables when he was released home and his dad set him up on the couch.

 

 He was healed, no external wounds, magical or otherwise, but he was weak and according to Deaton, would be for a few days. At least it would give him chance to catch up on his school work, especially since supernatural traffic had faded into near non-existence while he’d been in the hospital. The Nemeton was closed, unless someone else could find a more fitting sacrifice than the Nogitsune to open it again. It was dormant and if _Team Beacon Hills_ had anything to say about it, it’d stay that way.

 

 That didn’t stop his dad from worrying though. He’d swapped shifts at the station so he could spend Stiles’s first couple of days at home with him, and took his time getting out the door when it was finally time to head back to work.

 

 “Dad, you’re going to be late. I’m fine, okay? I promise to do no laundry, no cooking. It’s a day of sweatpants, leftover Chinese food and _Xbox_ for me, maybe even some _3DS_ if I’m feeling energetic.”

 

 His dad scowled as he put on his jacket. “At least try to put in a few hours of school work first? I know all this wasn’t your fault, kiddo, but if you want your choice of schools–”

 

 “I will dad, promise,” Stiles assured him, grabbing one of the mugs from coffee off the side and pouring its contents into a thermos, before pushing it into his dad’s hands. “Now c’mon, don’t make me the reason you’re late for work again.” He hurried his dad toward the front door but stopped dead as he pulled it open, because there Peter stood, poised as if ready to push the doorbell.

 

 Stiles’s heart leapt at the sight of him, artfully tousled hair, neatly trimmed stubble and a v-neck that really… _shouldn’t_.

 

 “Hey,” Stiles said, caught off-guard and a little breathless.

 

 “Good morning, Stiles,” Peter said eloquently, lifting a handful of paper bags and a little card tray with three coffees inside from the niche, expensive coffee shop downtown. “I brought coffee and cinnamon buns.”

 

 Stiles’s dad eyed them both critically before plucking up one of each of the proffered cups and bags. “I’ll take mine to go, but that doesn’t mean I’m not watching you, Hale.”

 

 Peter smiled his most charming smile. “Of course, Sheriff, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

 

 “And Stiles, homework first and just…just be responsible okay.”

 

 “When am I ever anything but?” Stiles said cheerfully, earning himself another shrewd, displeased look from his dad, before he stepped over the threshold.

 

 “I’m trusting you with him, Hale, don’t make me regret it,” his dad threw back over his shoulder as he headed for the cruiser.

 

“On my life, Sheriff,” Peter offered, and he didn’t turn to look at Stiles until the cruiser was out of sight.

 

 “Hey,” Stiles said again, still a little breathless but a lot more coherent this time.

 

 Peter’s lips twitched in a playful smirk. “Aren’t you going to invite me in, Stiles?”

 

 A shiver crept up Stiles’s spine and he swallowed thickly. “God, when you say my name like that…”

 

 Those eyes practically glittered as Peter stepped in. He let the door close behind them and crowded Stiles against the banister. He set the coffee and paper bags on the stairs beside him, before drawing up to meet Stiles’s gaze. They were nearly of a height now; so much had changed since the night they’d first met. Everything had.

 

 Peter looked almost soft now, felt soft with his expensive sweater press against him and his darkened eyes so close. Stiles reached up to curl his fingers in the material and exhaled shakily when Peter leaned in closer, capturing it between their chests. He felt contained, safe, warm, with the smell of expensive coffee rising up around them just like the night Peter had saved him. Only now the spicy scent of cinnamon mingled with it all.

 

 “Lydia is worried I’m using you as some weird sexual coping mechanism for PTSD or something.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d said that, only that it’d been on his mind since Lydia and Scott’s initial _‘we’re worried about you but we want you to be happy’_ talk.

 

 Peter looked positively devious. “Well, I’m more than happy for you to use whatever part of me you have need of.” He had this playful sense of humour, dark and dry sometimes like Stiles’s, it was part of what allowed him to shift Stiles’s mood easily whenever he did feel himself slipping into a dark place. Part of what made them work so well. He distracted Stiles, but when he couldn’t, he also offered the kind of understanding only experience could provide.

 

 “You could argue that many relationships are founded on one person looking for something they are lacking in another, shared experiences or something as simple as a search for companionship,” Peter added.

 

 Stiles hesitated, fingers curling a little more in Peter’s ridiculously expensive clothing as uncertainty nipped at the edges of his mind. “And which one are we?”

 

 Peter canted his head a fraction, then leaned in, dragging his nose against Stiles’s and breathing softly, like a man finally inhaling a drag of a longed for cigarette, relaxing with each breath. “All of them.” The words dusted Stiles’s slightly parted lips without their mouths ever really touching. “I’m sure even your parents had to lean on each other through some difficult experiences. Your father served in the war before they met, did he not?”

 

 Stiles nodded. His dad had never really talked about it with him but he knew he’d had dark days, knew his mom had been the light breathed back into his life afterward. After the traumas no man should have faced, especially one as young as his dad had been back then. He got that, got what Peter meant, had even considered it himself. But Stiles hadn’t been sure himself that this was…like Peter had said, a relationship, not for Peter at least, not until he’d just said it aloud, as if he’d known Stiles had needed to hear it.

 

 “I guess, people might not know what it is you get from me. It makes it hard for them to believe this is real.”

 

 Peter pressed in so Stiles could feel the banister against his back. His hands gripped Stiles’s waist, thumbs grazing the sensitive dip leading down to his hipbone through his t-shirt. “What if I’m wondering the same thing about you? What do you get from me, Stiles?”

 

 Again, his name, in that damn husky drawl. It was hot and intimate, like he was whispering the most profane obscenity just for him and the most profound compliment all at once.

 

 “You’re…you made me feel... _everything,_ instead of just being afraid or feeling nothing at all.”

 

 Peter made an odd, sharp sort of sound that was both a breath and a growl all at once and he gripped Stiles’s waist harder just for a moment, studying his face from a hairsbreadth away before leaning in to brush their mouths together. It was soft, almost chaste but no less intimate for it and when he drew back it was with reluctance and a clearer, relieved sort of expression.

 

 “Me too.” His hands caressed Stiles’s torso almost reverently, up to the place on his chest where the wound had been, before they slid to catch one wrist instead. He plucked up the coffees with his free hand and started toward the kitchen. “Grab the cinnamon buns.”

 

 Stiles blinked at the sudden shift in mood, but snatched up the bags on the stairs just in time to follow Peter’s lead into the dining area regardless. When Peter started spreading his books that’d been piled neatly on the dining table across the surface, he frowned, even though he felt lighter, more sure of himself than he had for a long time.

 

 Peter felt the same. Exactly the same. This was real and good and those two things, for the first time in so long, weren’t mutually exclusive.

 

 “We’re seriously doing homework?”

 

 Peter raised a brow. “To start with. There’s no sense in giving the good sheriff and his guns any reason to try and come between us. That would be wholly unnecessary.” He set a bag and a coffee down on each side of the table. He looked up then, eyes sweeping over Stiles. An almost uncertain look flitted across his face. He wanted to ask for something and was nervous, Stiles thought, which was a feat in itself. Peter was always so sure of everything.

 

 “Did you…want to start with something else?” Stiles asked, trying for sensual and possibly failing, but he felt more confident in any case. Because Peter wanted him. Because Peter had said ‘me too.’

 

 “If you’d indulge me,” he began, keeping his stance passive, “I’d like to look at you.”

 

 It was on the tip of Stiles’s tongue to ask what he meant, but then he saw the way Peter’s gaze drifted briefly to his chest and he understood.

 

 It felt odd to pull off his t-shirt in the broad light of day in the middle of his kitchen and he felt almost self-conscious with the stark morning light streaming in through the window, leaving him no place to hide. The first, last and only time they’d been _‘together’,_ it had felt like his body wasn’t quite his own with the Nemeton, and by extension the Nogitsune, tainting it. Now there was nothing between them but skin and that felt more intimate somehow.

 

 Knowing he probably wasn’t going to die the next day also let his mind dare to hope, that this might not be all, that there might be more, everything.

 

 He stood there for some time, Peter’s eyes roving his torso as he approached him. He didn’t ask, not with words, but he did reach for Stiles slowly enough to give him ample opportunity to step back. His fingers ghosted across Stiles’s sternum, round to his back as he circled him, in constant contact with him in a way that was tender yet predatory at the same time. The gentle paradox that was Peter Hale.

 

 Stiles shuddered, unable to help but look down at his chest when Peter came back around to lay his palm flat on his breastbone. The wound had vanished as if it had never been. It had disappeared as soon as the Nemeton had been closed, thankfully as it would’ve been hard to explain to the hospital, but he hadn’t quite dared to examine his body since his release.

 

 Here with the warm sunlight kissing his skin as lovingly as Peter’s fingertips, he saw himself, perhaps not unchanged but most definitely whole.

 

 “Satisfied?” Stiles breathed.

 

 “Never.” Peter’s voice was a husky almost-purr, irresistible and this time it was Stiles that leaned in, stepping to him, letting his hands slide up his shoulders to cup the back of his head and draw their mouths together.

 

 It was easier this time. He knew what Peter liked, parted his lips just enough, flicked his tongue in just for a touch, nothing deeper as their mouths melded. He felt like their bodies could sink into one another, were it but for their flesh. Stiles groaned, hungry and broken all at once into his mouth and Peter answered it with an inhuman growl, bearing him back against the kitchen table at the same time as Stiles’s tugged him backward toward it.

 

 The back of Stiles’s legs hit the table’s edge and Peter squeezed his thighs, lifting him onto the table and pressing in close to stand between his parted legs.

 

 “Knew you’d be like this,” Peter panted between kisses, “ravenous, complicated, perfect. A man that drinks coffee the way you do, like it’s the sweetest sin…”

 

 Stiles’s head spun with heated kisses and the feel of Peter’s hands sliding between him and the table to cup his ass, knead and caress through his sweatpants like some horny teenager. Stiles thought of all the times Peter had watched him sip coffee, until Peter’s teeth nipped his chin and drew him sharply back to the present.

 

 They necked like they were _both_ teenagers, Stiles’s fingers sliding up under Peter’s sweater to tease at hard muscle. He arched subtly into his belly for glancing pressure against his cock. He was hard and so was Peter but he’d never had just this, kisses and touches in the dining room like he was just a normal teenager and he wondered if Peter ever had either. Whether he had or hadn’t, it felt good just to kiss and touch for now, for both of them it seemed. When they eventually parted, Stiles’s lips were kiss-bruised and his neck damp from gentle nips and sucks.

 

 Peter looked so ridiculously young, eyes bright and face a little pink as he gave Stiles a longing look, before drawing away. “Let’s…take our time.”

 

 “You want to court me or something?” Stiles managed huskily.

 

 The corner of Peter’s lips quirked. “Something like that, perhaps.” He drew back further and tugged Stiles gently until he was standing beside the table rather than on it, pushing one of the cooling coffees toward him. Then he surveyed the spread of text books with a long-suffering sigh. “High School. What work do you need to catch up on? I was always quite accomplished at economics.”

 

 “Of course you were.” Stiles laughed a little breathlessly at the way Peter tried to sound so collected, even if his hair was mussed from Stiles’s fingers and his lips still spit-shiny. Sometimes it was all just so surreal he wondered if he really was dreaming, but he didn’t think even his imagination could conjure some of the witty, beautiful, ridiculous things that came out of Peter’s mouth.

 

 “You’re really are committed to winning my dad over, aren’t you?”

 

 “I respect him and to earn respect back from a man like him would be a compliment indeed, but besides which, he’s important to you. He’s pack, even if we aren’t bound by the traditional pack bonds.”

 

 Stiles swallowed thickly, understanding the significance of such a proclamation without Peter needing to explain werewolf politics and traditions. He was claiming his dad as family, as pack because of Stiles. Somehow, after all the years in dabbling with the supernatural and getting caught up in werewolf culture, that statement meant more to him than an awkward, _‘so shall we go steady?’_

 “I told you,” Peter continued when he didn’t reply, voice easy and calm, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. He took a seat on the opposite side of the table and carefully began to pick apart a cinnamon bun with his fingertips like it was a fine art. “I can be very nice to the people I like.”

 

 Watching Peter lick cream cheese frosting off his fingertip should not be so arresting, Stiles thought, downing half his coffee. He opened up his _Economics_ textbook as Peter pulled Stiles’s notes toward him with a frown on his face.

 

 “Besides, education is important,” Peter added distractedly as he tried to decipher Stiles’s erratic handwriting.

 

 “Where did you go to college?” Stiles asked, pulling out a notepad and pen to get started on his make-up assignment.

 

 The conversation was easy, domestic even and all the sweeter for it in the wake of months of tension. The smell of coffee, cinnamon, Peter and books coalescing in something that felt like contentment and the start of something more.

 

 Oddly enough, Peter’s voice, his occasional comments and direction kept Stiles involved in the task at hand. It helped to have the drier or more complicated concepts broken up by Peter’s witty one-liners, or even Peter’s own entertaining college experiences.

 

 He was surprised when he handed over the paper to Peter for a once-over, only to find it wasn’t even lunch time yet. “I…you don’t have to do this, you know,” he said awkwardly as he returned with two fresh cups of coffee. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to be my tutor or my teacher just because I’m younger than you.”

 “Nonsense,” Peter said distractedly as he flicked through. “I’ve always enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experience. Jaded as it is, many don’t care to receive it. Besides, if I wish to monopolise your time I should at least spend _some_ of it making up for all the trouble my family have caused you in the last few years.”

 

 Stiles froze hesitated, half-seated, the sudden rigidity to his posture drawing Peter’s eyes to his.

 

 “Stiles?”

 

 “I don’t…I don’t want to be part of your reparations. I don’t want you to feel obligated or–”

 

 “Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” Peter said, so gentle, so real in his tenderness. “I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because I want you. I want to help you because I want to, because you’re such a strong, independent, intelligent young man and you deserve to become all you can be. I want to spoil you because that’s part of who I am, how I show my affection.” He reached across the table, laying his palm up for Stiles to take if he wanted, only if he wanted.

 

 Stiles reached for it without needing to think, his fingers curling around Peter’s warm ones. It was ridiculous, really, how such a simple touch could ground him, make him feel so connected and alive yet calm all at once.

 

 With a small smile creeping across his face, Stiles tentatively hooked his ankle around Peter’s. He relished the fond smile that touched Peter’s mouth and eyes, lit him up from the inside.

 

 “I’m not a good man but I want to be good for you, in the ways I know how. And perhaps at times, to others, it may come across as unequal, because I am older, stronger, faster, but I want you to always know the truth of it.”

 

 “And the truth is?”

 

 “That this is brand new but I’ve known you for some time and already know that I’ll do anything for you. You’ve sparked something in me I didn’t think I was capable of and that makes you the one with the power out of the two of us.”

 

 Stiles worried the inside of his cheek as the intimacy of Peter’s words rushed through him, making his breath a little ragged with the intensity of it. Because they talked and they bantered and he thought Peter said things sometimes that he didn’t tell anyone else, but he hadn’t ever really heard him say how he felt until now. Not like this, with no mistaking his meaning.

 

 “And what about when I go to college? If I want to go half way across the country or–”

 

 “If you want me, I’ll follow you, wherever you want to go.”

 

 Stiles blinked. How could it be that easy? Perhaps his disbelief was evident on his features because Peter canted his head in that way he did, with that little smile again, just for him.

 

 “I’m a wealthy entrepreneur and in all honesty, there’s nothing that interests me as much as you. Nothing I want to see that I haven’t already, nothing that I want to do without you.”

 

 He remembered something his dad had said once, how he’d seen the world in his service but when he’d met Stiles’s mom, she had become his world. Everything he thought he’d wanted, he then only wanted with her. Stiles had just never thought anyone would ever feel that way about _him_.

 

 “But I don’t get it,” Stiles frowned. “You talk like you want to give me the world but I can’t even hope to give anything back.”

 

 Peter squeezed his hand gently, catching Stiles’s foot resting against his ankle with both of his, in such a childish but genuine gesture that it made Stiles’s stomach flip. “You make me feel _everything,_ instead of nothing at all,” Peter reminded him. “You do everything, Stiles, don’t let your self-consciousness sell you short.”

 

 There, holding Peter’s hand, nearly playing _‘footsie’_ with him under the table, he allowed himself to think of a future beyond graduation, one that hadn’t always been guaranteed to him. One that more than once, he’d thought he’d never live to see. He thought of apartment hunting with Peter in some college town, not too far from his dad, thought of being spoiled the way Peter said, thought of Peter’s promise of courtship and real dates and he just…wanted, all of it. And here Peter was, saying he could have it all, it felt like a dream.

 

 “I don’t think it’s entirely self-consciousness, I’m a catch,” Stiles managed with a sheepish smile. “I think most of it is not daring to hope, you know?” His face flamed when Peter lifted his hand to brush his lips across Stiles’s knuckles, as if in a display of how he could have it all, that there was nothing standing in the way anymore, not even Stiles himself.

 

 He held Peter’s gaze for a long moment and swore he could see the glint of eagerness to share all the things to come, the little moments, all of it.

 

 “You know, I think I’m going to quite like being charmed by you,” Stiles said at last, his tone teasing as he reached over to flick his fingertip through the foam of Peter’s coffee and bring it to his lips.

 

 Peter growled almost playfully, catching Stiles’s wrist before he brought it to his lips and leaned across the table. He drew Stiles’s finger into his own mouth, sucking softly, nipping at the very tip in mock admonishment as he released him.

 

 Stiles’s cheeks burned but the newness, the embarrassment, the excitement didn’t still his tongue, not now, not with Peter. “I think I’m going to make you work up a bit of a chase.”

 Peter’s eyes darkened but his smile was stunning.

 

 “I can’t wait.”

 

 


End file.
